SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA
FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT
SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB)
STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE
MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PRODUCER SHAWNEE DAY
SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN
VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS ANN SCHOLHAMER
VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM
DEVELOPMENT MANAGER JOEY MANDEVILLE DATA ASSOCIATE TATIANA PEREZ
MARKETING ASSOCIATE MAJA STACHNIK
MARKETING ASSOCIATE MICHAEL THOMPSON
VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY SALES REPRESENTATIVE WILL ROGERS
SALES REPRESENTATIVE KELLY BRAUN
MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER
ADVERTISING
ADS@CHICAGOREADER.COM, 312-392-2970
CREATE A CLASSIFIED AD LISTING AT CLASSIFIEDS.CHICAGOREADER.COM
DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS
DISTRIBUTIONISSUES@CHICAGOREADER.COM
READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM, INC.
CHAIRPERSON EILEEN RHODES
TREASURER TIMO MARTINEZ
SECRETARY TORRENCE GARDNER
DIRECTORS MONIQUE BRINKMAN-HILL, JULIETTE BUFORD, DANIEL DEVER, MATT DOUBLEDAY, JAKE MIKVA, ROBERT REITER, MARILYNN RUBIO, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD STEED
READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM 2930 S. MICHIGAN, SUITE 102 CHICAGO, IL 60616, 312-3922934, CHICAGOREADER.COM
Bring me from beneath the ether, either dreams come true
Or my nightmares
Of having fevers
Turning these meat cleavers
On people aiming they heaters on me. In real life, They the homies, Paranoia keeping me lonely
I had a talk with my granny She said omens run in the family
We be no good to the people thats so good & so good to the people that dont deserve it. On purpose, I left my location In search of some elevation
From my past.
Knew I wouldn’t last if I was tripping on what’s behind me.
Had to find the-
Definition of leaving well enough alone. Every night i’m in my 2,3 cutting corners to stay up in these coupe seats.. 4 doors is the result of mo dough
“What Biggie say?”
Mo money mo problems
shit..Mo money mo condoms
Its 12 steps to being a addict
Greed inhabit the seed worser than rabbits
ravish carrots, cabbage, & radish
Underneath the ether Im a savage
Everyday getting grimer
I no longer have time for the Air max 95’s or the Mike #5’s I cut ties a long time ago So I could grind low key
Once a OG told me slow money better than no money & show money aint gone be your money you keep showing it.
By Frsh Waters
Frsh Waters from Chicago’s Westside is a writer, performance artist, & community outreach coordinator for Chicago youth arts non-profit John Walt Foundation and is a Co-Founder of Chicago’s incomparable Pivot Gang. He believes writing is a road map to the world. Frsh is a street food lover & appreciator of art. His mantra is “Change is the crossroads to innovation; either be the change you want to see envisioned on a canvas, or wonder why it doesn’t exist.”
A weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
Celebrate the release of Like a Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration, Haymarket Books’ anthology of writers speaking on the United States prison-industrial complex. Editor Diana Marie Delgado and contributors John Murillo, Nicole Sealey, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Candace Williams will read from the anthology, followed by a reception.
March 6, 2025 at 6:00 PM CT
Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org
Play!
Make time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.
Reader Letters m
Re: “Meet the Halsted Athena,” an art review about a sculpture at Lincoln Park gallery Wrightwood 659, written by Bianca Bova and published in our February 13 issue (volume 54, number 19)
The $15 complained about [in this review] gets you into two other exhibits, including “Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now,” favorably reviewed by the Reader. —Laura Gawlinski, via Facebook
Note from the EIC: the exhibitions “Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now” and “John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes” closed on February 15, and the statue is closed to visitors at the moment. The sculpture will be viewable again alongside the gallery’s next exhibition, “The First Homosexuals: the Birth of a New Identity, 1869–1939,” opening on May 2.
Find us on socials: Facebook and Bluesky: chicagoreader X: Chicago_Reader Instagram and Threads: chicago_reader
Linkedin: chicago-reader
The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration.
m letters@chicagoreader.com
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
On Sunday, I had the privilege of listening to some of my colleagues speak at Thalia Hall. They were there to introduce the program for an event that sta writer Micco Caporale originally organized on their own, but converted to a fundraiser for the Reader after our financial crisis became public.
One by one, Micco, music editor Philip Montoro, and features writer Katie Prout shared why they do this work and what it means to them.
Their words were a powerful reminder of some of the reasons why we’re here. We cover Chicago music in a way no one else can. We tell the stories of Chicago’s unhoused and active addiction communities with dignity and respect. We strive to uplift underground scenes, report on LGBTQ+ issues, and defend free speech.
I stood at the back bar with tears in my eyes (tears of happiness, a welcome change), thinking about what’s happened since I started my role as publisher. The past six weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions, and while things have (thankfully) stabilized, the road ahead is still di cult.
WHAT WE’VE DONE SO FAR
Since announcing our restructuring and layoffs on January 14, we reduced our 2025 budget (expenses) by 30 percent, increased sales and development (fundraising e orts), and worked toward greater transparency with our sta and board of directors.
We’ve created new processes for cash flow monitoring, revenue goals, and expenses to address the deficit we faced in January, and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Thanks in no small part to the generosity of our readers, we’ve been able to get through the hardest part.
But now, we face the ongoing challenge. As I recently said to some of our sta , “We can’t take our foot o the gas for even a second.” To truly be in the clear, we need enough money in the bank—or guaranteed incoming revenue— to cover six months of payroll, debts, and operating expenses. Long-term sustainability is not a one-sizefits-all for media outlets. Why is journalism
expensive? What are we paying for?
• People. Payroll is our biggest expense. Many of our staff members agreed to temporary pay cuts and furloughs in the interest of saving jobs. Paying living wages to our team is essential to our long-term health.
• Print. Our print edition is revenue-positive and a key part of our strategy to reach all of Chicago.
• Quality. We don’t cut corners that lead to misinformation. Our policies ensure transparency in sponsored content, and our copy editing process, led by assistant managing editor Savannah Hugueley, maintains accuracy.
• Citywide access. We pay to distribute the Reader across Chicago, ensuring our journalism reaches every community.
Donations are always welcome (go to chicagoreader.com/donate). Becoming a monthly donor helps, and we thank those donors with a weekly issue PDFs emailed in advance of our street date, as well as discount codes for merchandise and event tickets, first look at contests, and other benefits as we find them.
Our revenue efforts hinge on two major things: fundraising and advertising. Our advertising revenue has increased quickly
from where we were in January, partly due to the Best of Chicago issue coming March 6. If you are a local business, advertising with us (in print, digital, and through sponsorships) means you’re advertising to our readers—the people who care most about arts, music, culture, and community. And the more we can set up long-term plans and contracts, the more we can forecast our incoming revenue.
OTHER WAYS TO SUPPORT US
Tell your friends. Share how the Reader supports you, as an artist or a Chicagoan, or as someone who feels more informed because you’re reading our articles.
Use our self-service options. Buy a classified ad (chicagoreader.com/classifieds), upgrade your event listing, or buy an ad on the Best of Chicago ballot.
Sign up for our email newsletters, bookmark our homepage, and follow us on social media (join us on Bluesky!). Our digital numbers make the case for us when we’re talking to funders, advertisers, or potential partners.
A month ago, I wasn’t sure we’d be printing this paper. Now, I’m more hopeful than ever. Thank you for reading and for supporting us during this di cult time. v
—Amber Nettles, publisher m anettles@chicagoreader.com
The snow is starting to melt. READER STAFF
CITY LIFE
RSweet spot
A Ravenswood boutique brings coastal vibes to Chicago.
By ISA GIALLORENZO
etail therapy is real, especially if you step inside MOLASSES. It’s a charming boutique tucked in a cozy, sunlit space below street level. MOLASSES is the shop equivalent of a stroll along a breezy beach. The air inside the store is actually infused with fresh scents, thanks to P.F. Candle Co. soy candles carefully selected by owner Shea Morrill. “Growing up on the Maine coast, surrounded by rocky beaches and pine forests, so much of my inspiration comes from the natural world,” she says.
The store is a reflection of Morrill’s artistic background. An art educator, painter, jewelry maker, and photographer, Morrill has crafted an inviting space that radiates warmth, attention to detail, and relaxed sophistication. The shop o ers a thoughtfully curated selection of goods at surprisingly a ordable prices.
“We emphasize gender neutrality, size inclusivity, and fair pricing so that every customer feels welcome and celebrated,” says Morrill, underscoring sustainability as the heart of her business.
Morrill, 31, moved to Chicago in 2018 with the dream of starting her own shop. She began by selling online and at vintage markets before opening her brick-and-mortar in November 2023. Her path was shaped by her creative and resourceful upbringing in Maine.
“Growing up in a large family with a tight budget, my mother taught me the joys of secondhand gem-seeking from an early age,” she reminisces. After a wide range of retail jobs and a bachelor’s in art education from the University of Vermont, Morrill says she was able
to develop an artistic eye and the operational skills needed to run a small business. Every item at MOLASSES has a story worth telling—and Morrill is happy to share each product’s origins with her appreciative customers. Take the Carrot Beeswax Taper Candle ($15), sourced from a family-run farm in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. “The farm grows the produce and then harvests their favorite vegetable (carrot or otherwise) to cast a candle mold from. They then fill these molds with their own bees’ beeswax, thus creating an entirely grassroots work of art,” Morrill explains.
Though the shop is small, it’s packed with treasures such as a 1930s handsewn cotton quilt in off-white and dusty pink ($275), a roomy 1990s Cherokee denim chore coat ($75), and rare antique garments sourced from Paris. Morrill also stocks romantic nightgowns-turned-dresses, reworked quilted liners and T-shirts she upcycles herself (starting at $55), and artful textiles, prints, ceramics, and clothing by artist-run PO-EM Studio. If you’re gift hunting, there’s no shortage of options: cards with plantable envelopes ($7), notebook trios ($19), moss-green patina candle holders ($16), recycled steel wind chimes (starting at $24), Moroccan babouche slippers ($42), books for creative minds, fun socks, and an eye-catching selection of candles.
MOLASSES showcases local artisans, including screen-printed artwork by Kinaloon, ceramic homewares by SKT Studio, and handmade jewelry by the shop’s neighbor, Ellen. The store regularly hosts in-store workshops, such as an upcoming session with Nandi Duszynski of Bliss Joy Bull, who will teach the art of decorative mending.
Morrill is excited about an upcoming popup. “We will be heading to Artifact Events on March 8 and 9 for our first pop-up market of the year! This is a great opportunity to see a curated selection of our offerings in that beautiful Ravenswood event space, alongside other women-owned businesses in celebration of International Women’s Day,” she shares. Full details can be found at lincolnsquare.org/ international-womens-day-market.
“We find each of the brands we carry to be so special, and hand-select each item with the story and process as well as quality and design in mind,” she continues. “This curation process ensures even the little purchases feel special and unique.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
SHOP LOCAL
FOOD & DRINK
Some people make the trip to Wrigleyville for $20 beers and mediocre baseball. For others, it’s brunching and binge drinking among roving bands of twentysomethings. For me, it’s bulgogi beef over rice.
Rice’N Bread, in an unassuming storefront off Sheffield, feels a little like you’re stepping into the neighborhood’s past. Before fast food joints and trendy brunch spots, Lakeview was a working-class neighborhood with a sizable Japanese community (see also: Nisei Lounge next door). And before Rice’N Bread was Rice’N Bread, it was another spot called Hamburger King.
serves a smattering of American diner classics alongside teriyaki; a Korean rice dish served in a sizzling stone bowl called dolsot bibimbap; and Chinese beef noodle soup yetcamein. I suggest a unique egg and vegetable scramble called akutagawa (named for the longtime customer who invented it).
I’ve tried a lot on the menu, yet I keep coming back to bulgogi beef over rice.
Thinly sliced ribeye is cooked in a sweet soy sauce, layered with lettuce and a pile of silky japchae noodles, and doused with a healthy helping of homemade gochujang sauce.
Two crispy beef-andvegetable mandoo are nestled on top. My stomach squirms in anticipation—both because of the delicious meal I’m about to devour and the consequences I’ll pay tomorrow for doing so. I wipe my brow and dig in. —SHAWN MULCAHY
RICE’N BREAD 3435 N. Sheffield, $17.95, 773-281-4452, ricenbread.com v
NEWS & POLITICS
INVESTIGATION
Some Chicago gunshot victims don’t trust ambulances
Survivors are choosing to transport themselves to the hospital instead of waiting for emergency services. Experts say the Chicago Fire Department isn’t doing everything it can to improve slow response times.
By RITA OCEGUERA FOR THE TRACE
This story was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America.
In early November, Michael Smith was shot in the thigh after an argument with a close friend in front of his grandmother’s home in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Smith’s cousin called 911, but 15 minutes later, they were still waiting for an ambulance. “I don’t want to die from bleeding out,” Smith remembered thinking.
O ce of the Inspector General has called for the fire department to improve its data collection every year since 2021, more information has been missing from its records.
Tom Yamauchi opened the original Hamburger King in 1959, and it remained a community staple until it changed hands in early 2013, according to my colleague Mike Sula. Like its forebearer, Rice’N Bread
Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.
So, he took matters into his own hands. A friend drove him to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, about ten minutes away, where he spent a few hours being treated for his wound. Ultimately, it took the ambulance about half an hour to arrive at his grandmother’s house, Smith’s cousin told him. Had they not traveled to West Suburban themselves, Smith said, “I probably would have died.”
Chicagoans have heard this story over and over again: when someone gets shot, ambulances don’t always arrive quickly, and victims don’t always survive. As a result, survivors of gun violence say they don’t trust the city’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS). To avoid the risk that a delayed transport could cause an avoidable loss, many gunshot victims are getting rides from friends or driving themselves to a nearby hospital, forgoing transportation in an ambulance for a chance to reach an emergency room on time.
People like Smith experience only the end result of a systemic problem: After a shooting, the ambulance takes a long time to reach the crime scene. But what they don’t see is that, beneath the surface of the Chicago Fire Department’s (CFD) worsening response times, the department is also failing to keep track of this information. Although Chicago’s
Before the city can get more ambulances to respond on time, experts say, it must first monitor the problem more thoroughly. “If you have that data to support your needs and your requests, it might make it easier for the authority of jurisdiction when requesting future needs,” said Ken Holland, a senior specialist with the National Fire Protection Association, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that sets safety standards.
When someone like Smith leaves a scene before an ambulance arrives, they’re not counted in CFD’s records, so it’s hard to say how many gunshot victims fall into that group. But research and interviews show that many people opt for alternative transportation options, because of distrust in paramedics, fears about cost, or other reasons.
When an ambulance takes too long to arrive, Smith said, it makes residents feel like the city and its first responders don’t care. “They need to do better,” he said.
The fire department did not respond to requests for comment.
A decade-long data problem
A Trace analysis of last year’s medical emergency incidents, including accidents, seizures, and shootings through November 19, 2024, found that, in more than one in five cases, Chicago EMS took more than six minutes to respond, the state’s threshold for adequate response time. But it also found that data was missing in over 43,000 incidents.
“To not put a priority on managing, maintaining, and then setting standards with this
Bulgogi beef at Rice’N Bread
data is almost negligence,” said Cheo Patrick, the CEO of a crisis management consultant company who has personal experience with emergency response times in Chicago.
Since 2013, the Inspector General’s O ce has sounded the alarm that CFD has failed to accurately document the data necessary to assess whether it’s meeting the six-minute standard for EMS response times. The fire department also still hasn’t implemented several recommendations made by the oversight o ce.
“This is life-saving city service,” said Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. “The priority here ought to be really high.” Her office made the following recommendations:
• Create annual public reports on response time performance using percentile measurements.
• Use GPS technology to address inaccurate or blank response times.
• Consider hiring an internal data analyst to improve data quality.
• Conduct a geographic analysis, by ward or community, that identifies areas where ambulances aren’t meeting their response time goals.
Five years ago, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications approved new computer-aided dispatch, mobile, and analytics software for the city’s 911 center to improve emergency response times. In 2023, CFD said it was targeting late 2023 to early 2024 for its rollout, but as of February 2025, it had not gone into e ect. The mayor’s o ce did not respond to requests for comment.
The fire department also said it would partner with Urban Labs at the University of Chicago to analyze response times. But a representative from the university said in an email to the Trace that their collaborative work has focused on “911 emergency communications center operations, occupational wellness, and the intersection between 911 calls and dispatch—particularly calls dispatched to police or to alternative/diversified response teams.” They have not looked at ambulance response times.
Data collection is only getting worse. The Trace’s analysis showed that the amount of missing data grew from 12.3 percent in 2021 to 13.1 percent in 2024 through mid-November.
Data transparency is important, said Patrick, the consultant, to maintain the community’s confidence in first responders.
“As a civilian, you should feel confident in knowing that your life, the life of your loved ones, the life of individuals in your community have value,” he said. “Where’s the level of due care for people who are in dire, traumatic situations?”
Gunshot victims take matters into their own hands
Patrick understands the split-second decision many Chicagoans have to make after being shot.
About 16 years ago, he was visiting family and friends in the South Shore neighborhood where he grew up. An argument with some residents he didn’t know escalated, and he was shot in his lower leg. Patrick told his friend to drive him to the University of Chicago Medical Center, which was eight minutes away. “Every second counts in those situations,” he said.
& POLITICS
Just a few years earlier, Patrick’s friend bled out and died from what he thought was a minor gunshot wound to the leg, but which turned out to be a serious hit to the artery. Patrick didn’t want the same thing to happen to him. He later found out that someone had called 911, but the ambulance took about 15 to 20 minutes to arrive. He was relieved that his friend drove him.
Nowadays, Patrick said, the increasingly lethal weapons used in shootings make gunfire even harder to survive. That’s why paramedics are crucial. But, he said, first responders have to be more proactive in creating trust between themselves and the community, especially in Black and Brown neighborhoods. There’s a tense history, Patrick said, between first responders and the trauma that takes place in these areas.
The Trace’s analysis of gunshot incidents between 2021 and November 2024 showed that areas on the south side were among the most affected by slow response times. Last year, Ward 9, which includes Chatham, Roseland, Pullman, Washington Heights, West Pullman, and Riverdale, had the highest number of gunshot-related calls to which it took more than six minutes for an ambulance to arrive. During the same time frame, one in five calls in that area had slow response times.
Holland, the national expert, said collecting and analyzing geolocation data can help answer questions like, “Where are the needs not being met in the community?”
The city can then use that data to justify adding ambulances to CFD’s fleet, reducing ambu-
Before the city can get more ambulances to respond on time, experts say, it must first monitor the problem more thoroughly.
lance response times, and, ultimately, building trust in a skeptical public. “There’s a big gap in terms of feeling confident and trust with [first responders], to take our lives in their hands and make sure that we’re OK,” Patrick said. “The unknown that you’re walking into, with that situation being life or death, is very scary.” v
Aaron Mendelson contributed data reporting to this story.
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood EDDIE QUIÑONES FOR THE TRACE
NEWS & POLITICS
ENVIRONMENT
Community members demand stricter emissions standards to fight pollution
A proposal before the Illinois Pollution Control Board would phase out gas-powered cars statewide.
By GREYSON VAN ARSDALE
Community members and environmental advocates are pushing the Illinois Pollution Control Board (IPCB) to adopt statewide regulations that will curb vehicle emissions.
Three proposed rules under consideration by the IPCB are part of a slate of seven originally passed by the state of California that have since been adopted in whole or in part by more than a dozen other U.S. states. If Illinois follows suit, automakers would be required to phase out gas-powered cars over time and make all new vehicles zero-emission by the model year 2035.
At an early December IPCB hearing, advocates called attention to a “public health crisis” spurred by diesel emissions in neighborhoods along Chicago’s industrial corridors. These areas have heavy concentrations of truck tra c, which community members say has impacted their ability to live, work, and breathe.
Zitlalli Paez, a lifelong Pilsen resident, reports negative health impacts from exposure to tra c fumes after she developed long COVID in late 2020. “Every day I went to work I was hit with the strong diesel smell from the trucks passing through Western—a street that sees many diesel trucks—causing me to experience extreme headaches, dizziness, strong allergies, difficulties breathing, and chest pain,” Paez says. “Ultimately, this forced me to quit that job because I could not go through with my day-to-day activities.”
Emmanuel Garcia, a high school junior living in Belmont Cragin, says he recently developed asthma, which he attributes to years of inhaling tra c fumes while on public transit. “More than half my junior class has asthma, and that’s over a hundred students. I think to myself: Is my family safe taking public transport, with gas cars and diesel trains, and
to walk around Chicago with factories, with chemical fumes up in the air and trucks emitting diesel fuels?” Garcia says.
According to the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force, Illinois ranks fifth among states in the continental U.S. for health risks from diesel emissions. Diesel fumes contain many substances that are harmful to human health, including arsenic, benzene, formaldehyde, and nickel. Long-term exposure to diesel pollution is also linked to increased risk of cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and hospital visits among the elderly and people with chronic health issues.
Health economist Alex Veloz told the IPCB about the impacts of diesel at the December
hearing. “In Illinois alone, the costs of treating and managing asthma—just asthma—exceeds $1.3 billion every year. This figure is driven by emergency room visits, hospitalizations, medications, and missed work and school days,” Veloz says. “Low-income communities and communities of color disproportionately bear the burden of vehicle emissions due to their proximity to highways and industrial zones.”
Advocates also see the regulations as a crucial tool in the fight against climate change. “Vehicles make up two-thirds of overall transportation sector emissions. They are the largest contributor to the largest sector [transportation] contributing to climate change” in the U.S., says Muhammed Patel, a
senior policy expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one group petitioning the IPCB to adopt the new standards. “We are seeing record-breaking climate disasters, and the costs of those climate disasters are going to continue to get worse. People talk a lot about the cost of these standards; let’s talk about the cost of the status quo.”
Although Illinois is more insulated from hurricanes and wildfires, the state has still seen a recent increase in “billion-dollar” disasters, a classification used by the federal government to track catastrophic events. In the last three years alone, the state has been impacted by more than two dozen such storms, costing more than $95 billion and killing 521 people. That’s up from the 22 major
disasters faced by Illinois during the two decades between 1980 and 2000.
Community members representing a broad range of local and national groups attended the December IPCB hearing, including the NRDC, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Climate Action Now, and the American Lung Association. More than 40 supporters signed up to give public testimony. Automobile and manufacturing interest groups, including the Illinois Automobile Dealers Association, the Mid-West Truckers Association, and the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, previously urged the board to reject the proposals. Opponents have argued that Illinois should not be subject to regulations written by another state. However, as it stands, states legally only have two options: the standards set by the federal government or California.
Since 1967, California has had the ability to set its own environmental regulations as long as they remain more stringent than those set by the Clean Air Act. As the federal government expanded environmental protections in the late ’60s and early ’70s, California was already in the process of addressing long-standing problems with air pollution on its own, and its efforts were grandfathered in.
If Illinois adopts California’s standards, it would mark a crucial inroad into states with large manufacturing industries. Of the top ten states for electric vehicle investment, Illinois would be only the second after Nevada to adopt the stricter standards. Four global vehicle manufacturers—Rivian, Stellantis, Ford, and Lion Electric—are currently producing electric vehicles in Illinois.
The IPCB will hold additional hearings on the proposed emission regulations from March 10 to 12. The hearings will be held in Springfield, but residents from across Illinois can participate via Zoom. The IPCB also accepts written testimony via email at PCB.Clerks@illinois.gov.
“We all benefit from clean air,” says Patel. “Whether or not you have asthma or a preexisting condition, even if you don’t have someone in your family that does, you benefit every time you walk outside and there’s not soot, [nitrogen oxides], ozone, contaminating your breathing. I think anyone who has an interest in that, whether for themselves or their family, should definitely provide comment to the board.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
KAZIMIERZ POPŁAWSKI/FLICKR VIA CC BY-NC 2.0
ARTS & CULTURE
Support local students pursuing higher education with your purchase of a 7X Bingo Multiplier Instant Ticket from the Illinois Lottery
The Illinois Lottery is nationally recognized for its pioneering work with specialty lottery tickets dedicated to raising awareness and funding for specific worthy causes that impact local communities.In January 2024, the Illinois Lottery launched a joint specialty instant ticket supporting ten different causes, including the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). A portion of every dollar spent on this ticket directly contributes to UNCF, helping fund educational scholarships for college and university students. Now in its second year, the joint ticket, the 7X Bingo Multiplier, costs $5 and is available for purchase at more than 7,000 Illinois Lottery retailers throughout the state. With its eye-popping green background and colorful, eye-catching design, 7X Bingo Multiplier makes a great present for friends, family members, neighbors, and colleagues 18 and over—or play it yourself for a chance to win up to $200,000. Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information about 7X Bingo Multiplier and the many good causes it supports each year. Read on to learn more about the United Negro College Fund, which celebrated its 80th-anniversary last year, and how your purchase of a 7X Bingo Multiplier ticket can help them empower Illinois students pursuing higher education over the next 80 years and beyond.
Higher education is a major pathway to upward mobility for individuals and leads to economic stability for families and communities. That reality inspired civil rights activist William J. Trent, educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune, and Tuskegee Institute president Frederick D. Patterson to found the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) in 1944. The philanthropic organization, whose motto is “A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a wonderful thing to invest in,” supports Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) while working to make higher education more accessible and equitable for marginalized students throughout the country.
In 2024, UNCF celebrated its 80th anniversary of educational leadership, advocacy, and community building. As it looks toward the next 80 years, the organization maintains a sterling reputation in the nonprofit world and beyond. The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranks it among the top charitable organizations in the United States. In the fiscal year 2023, it maintained a cost ratio of 15 percent of total expenses,
with 4 percent going for administrative costs and 11 percent for fundraising efforts. That means 85 percent of their funding goes toward mission-related programming expenditures. That’s no small potatoes when you consider that UNCF awards more than 12,000 scholarships annually that are collectively worth around
$65 million, making them the largest funder of minority students seeking higher education in the country.
Here in Illinois, UNCF awarded 399 scholarships to 310 students, including 230 scholarships to 178 students in Chicago in the 2023-2024 year, for a total of $2,844,435.99. “The dollar amount that scholarship assistance needs to be to help a student graduate is $5,000,” says UNCF Chicago regional development director Lisa Rollins. “Our average scholarship amount in the state of Illinois is $7,100, and for the city level of Chicago, the average scholarship amount is close to $9,000— so we almost double that amount.”
While some assume that students must attend one of UNCF’s 37 member schools to qualify for a scholarship through the organization, that’s not the case. Depending on the donor requirements, UNCF scholarship recipients use their funds to attend private and public universities and colleges in and out of their home states. Another common misconception is that students must be African American to apply. However, the organization does not discriminate based on race or ethnicity, and everyone is welcome
This
Courtesy UNCF
Infographic by Amber Huff
to apply. In addition to its higher ed services, UNCF provides college readiness programs for families and students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
As a testament to their work, 70 percent of African American students who receive a UNCF scholarship graduate within six years, compared to a national rate of 45 percent for all African American students. UNCF is also committed to supporting students at risk of dropping out of school due to unexpected financial hardships such as housing insecurity, medical issues, or natural disasters. Through their Emergency Student Aid (ESA) program, students can receive emergency grants and small loans to help cover their expenses. “We do find that 65 percent of those students graduate within one year of receiving their emergency assistance award. So we do know that that’s working,” Rollins says. That makes it all the more clear that every dollar donated to UNCF can make a difference in a student’s future. Last year, under Illinois Senate Bill 1508 (sponsored by Senator Mattie Hunter), UNCF became one of ten worthy causes to become part of the Illinois Lottery’s joint specialty ticket, which sells for $5 each at retailers across the state. The effort proved to be a stunning success. “The Lottery results had we had them last year, would
have automatically propelled us another million dollars,” Rollins says. “So we would’ve given out $3.8 million as opposed to $2.8, and that’s a huge difference. And when we do start giving them out, they’ll be twice the normal amount that we know it takes [to help students graduate]. The Lottery scholarships will be $10,000 scholarships.”
Rollins anticipates those scholarships will be distributed in May or June of this year. In the meantime, she encourages people to visit the UNCF website to learn more about their various scholarships and educational resources and to get involved. “In April, we’ll be doing our second radiothon in celebration of UNCF’s anniversary, and then we have our two big events. In June, we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of our gala, and in September, we will be doing our walk,” she says.
As UNCF looks ahead to its next 80 years, Illinoisans can continue to support their mission by purchasing a 7X Bingo Multiplier Instant Ticket from the Illinois Lottery. “I just want people to continue to buy the lottery ticket to help send kids to school here in Illinois or other places because we know that the number one reason our kids do not finish college is finance,” Rollins says. “That’s the number one reason they don’t go to school and the number one reason they don’t stay in school.”
For more information about UNCF Chicago, visit uncf.org/local-offices/chicago
This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery
Infographics by Amber Huff
ARTS & CULTURE
‘Not just video guys’
As content
creation
careens from quality to lackluster quantity, Bob. stays a course of dignity.
By ERIN TOALE
Robert Heishman and Robert Salazar are artists. Heishman, the more soft-spoken of the two, primarily works in photography, while the ebullient Salazar is a musician and videographer. Together, they form the creative production company Bob. The eponymous Roberts formalized their partnership in 2021, following a decade of friendship and mutual admiration. They have swiftly and skillfully made a monosyllabic name for themselves as professionals who are able to distill complex constellations of ideas down into a clear and pleasant essence—usually in the form of an image or video.
Once you start looking for it, you’ll notice the ubiquitous and mysterious Bob. credit line everywhere. They have their hands (and lenses) on some of the most exciting art and music projects produced across Chicago and beyond. Bob.’s umbrella is wide and its output vast. Clients of note include the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (CYSO), the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, and Re/Match. They also work directly with artists, performers, and musicians. Bob. provides traditional exhibition and portfolio documentation, as well as educational and didactic materials such as artist interviews, exhibition walk-throughs, and talent reels.
Heishman and Salazar are artists first and prioritize maintaining their independent creative practices. Heishman was recog-
clusive hiring practices. They both had early encounters with fame that lend a gravitas and maturity to their professionalism: In their respective teen years, Heishman worked for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company while Salazar’s band Awkward Silence went viral on MySpace and played the Vans Warped Tour. The multidisciplinarians explain, “At the core of it all is a shared work ethic and an unwavering commitment to living a creative life.”
Both are epic storytellers. There is an intangible quality to their projects: a combination of visual acumen and narrative construction that flirts with the sublime. Through the lens of childlike wonder with which they view Chicago’s cultural ecosystem, Bob. is actively preserving Chicago’s cultural histories.
nized as a Newcity Breakout Artist in 2024. Salazar—alongside Bob. cinematographer Jonathan Lopez—was recognized with a retrospective of the music videos they’ve produced at the Chicago Latino Film Fest in November 2024. The pair work to preserve and uplift the shared cultural histories of their subjects while producing creatively alongside them.
The two possess a unique combination of visioning and listening skills, as well as a discernible drive, rigorous standards, and commitment to quality outcomes. A blue-collar work ethic infuses their trajectory, with each project more ambitious than the last. A recent collaboration with CYSO found the duo voyaging with video crews into the homes of young musicians, recording cozy performances that are impactful far beyond the talking heads and B-roll footage typical to a promotional or fundraising reel. This innovative approach is driven by what they call a shared “creative engine” and upbringings that respected craft and prioritized communication. (It feels important to mention here that both are the youngest of four siblings.)
Heishman is from a working-class midwestern lineage of bricklayers and farmers. Salazar, a first-generation Latin American, credits his multicultural upbringing between Pennsylvania and Peru for his commitment to equity, which is also reflected in Bob.’s in-
Studio manager Anna Gelman (also a rising director-producer with the Neo-Futurists) oversees the archive as well as the company’s schedule and operations. Alongside artist Tony Lewis (whose studio is also a client), they run CV—an evolving archive of the late artist Greg Bae. Their process springs from a fount of empathy, trust, and intuition, foregrounding those values “not just as creative partners but in how we collaborate with clients, artists, and everyone in the Bob. orbit,” the collaborators share. “Filmmaking and photography, at their core, are acts of deep listening and interpretation. Whether we’re working on a documentary, a music video, or an exhibition, understanding the emotional undercurrents of a story or an image is just as important as the technical execution.”
Officially, Heishman’s title is head of photography, and Salazar’s is head of video and film. But Bob. and their growing team always work collaboratively and share credit, describing the process collectively as “both of us, all of us, never none of us.” The breadth of their deliverables is wide-ranging, but Bob. is perhaps best known for music videos and a unique, expansive approach to exhibition and studio documentation.
The visual art videos produced by Bob. feel like intimate, elevated studio visits. Re/Match, a new organization providing holistic support for Chicago artists, commissioned the company to make “artist spotlights” for its 2024 awardee cohort including Sofía Fernández Díaz and Alberto Ortega Trejo.
Longtime Bob. client Monique Meloche, who originally hired Heishman as her gallery’s photographer, recalls how, in April 2020, she decided to make an exhibition walk-through video for Nate Young’s solo exhibition “The Transcendence of Time.” Since the gallery
couldn’t open to the public due to COVID-19 restrictions, there was a sudden need for people to experience exhibitions remotely. “We’ve never looked back,” Meloche said, “as why would you not also have a video component to document every exhibition?” Meloche has commissioned such videos for approximately 24 exhibitions to date—usually three to five minutes long and highlighting the artist’s own voice. She stresses that “Bob. [is] the go-to video resource for Chicago’s contemporary galleries,” and emphasizes that as artists themselves, Heishman and Salazar are distinctly attuned to artists’ perspectives. “They are generous with their time and spirit and put all our artists at ease—even those not necessarily comfortable in front of the camera,” she said, noting that the team does a tremendous amount of research prior to commencing a new project. Meloche says her artists “rave” about their experience making these videos, which make contemporary art more accessible with their own distinct tenor.
Bob. also brings a discerning hand and in-good-faith ethos to reviving the lost art of music videos. “American Cheese,” featuring Woes and Bless 1, was notoriously filmed in, around, and on (the roof of) Redhot Ranch’s Wicker Park location (the Blue Line train passes through shots like a paid actor). Chicago rapper Woes, who has worked with Bob. on almost 20 projects, testifies: “One thing about Salazar is that he’s willing to do anything for the shot.” He elaborates on the playful, organic dynamic that emerges in their collaborations: “I write most of my music with the visual in mind. . . . We think about concepts that would intrigue our OWN brains and then execute them together. Everything is collaborative. We stay open-minded to each other’s two cents, it’s one of the most natural collaborations I’ve ever been a part of.”
Bob. wants you to know they are “not just video guys” who show up with cameras for passive content creation. “We want to unpack it, and we want to understand what the concerns of the work are . . . so that when we are in the business of translating it, we can translate it as faithfully as we can,” Heishman notes. As the majority of content creation careens away from quality toward listless sterile quantity, Bob. stays a course of dignity: producing probing inquiries into artistic labor and production with timeless values and cozy, congenial aesthetics that champion and preserve art and culture. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Bob. portrait, 2025 PHOTO BY BOB. (ROBERT CHASE HEISHMAN + ROBERT SALAZAR)
THEATER
Congo Square at a crossroads
A stalemate between the board and the artistic ensemble threatens the future of Chicago’s influential Black theater company.
By KERRY REID
For 25 years, Congo Square Theatre Company (CSTC) has been an important home for Black theater artists in Chicago. Founded in 1999 by Derrick Sanders and Reginald Nelson—who met while studying theater at Howard University in Washington, D.C., before relocating to Chicago—the company first announced its presence on the local scene with a 2000 production of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and went on to produce dozens of shows over the next decades, including several other Wilson plays and new works by Black writers, among them the world premiere of Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly in 2006 (a play that later had a Broadway production) and the local premiere of the late Chadwick Boseman’s Deep Azure in 2005. The company has consistently collected rave reviews alongside 33 Joseph Je erson Award nominations (it’s won six).
But over the past few months, a conflict between the board of directors and the ensemble has threatened Congo Square’s existence. On December 18, the ensemble (19 members at the time) issued a press release stating that they
had “unanimously decided to not participate in any production, artistic curating and programming for the upcoming 2025 Season until the current Board President has been removed from the Board, requested by the Ensemble on October 15, 2024, following the resignation of former artistic director, Ericka Ratcli . This includes but is not limited to: full productions, staged readings, auditions, courses, internships and artistic programming of any kind.”
In their December 18 press release, the ensemble said that they had requested meetings with the board on October 22, December 3, and December 16 “to no avail.” As reported by Mitch Dudek in the Sun-Times on December 19, Montorio-Archer said that the board supports Reese and also said, “We have a respect for the ensemble’s professional pivot. . . . if they’re deciding to not be a part of Congo Square Theatre Company, we respect their decision.”
ensemble meeting later and I just remember going, ‘I don’t like the way our board chair is talking to our artistic director. This is a recipe for a disaster.’ And then it just kept going and going until we got this surprise email that Ericka had resigned, and that resignation was done under duress as far as we’re concerned.”
Irons says that the ensemble did have a brief meeting with the board in October after Ratcliff’s resignation. “It was the most curt meeting post-an-artistic-director-resigning ever. We were told, ‘So here’s an update: Ericka has decided to resign and we have accepted her resignation. Moving on to item number two on the agenda.’ You know, no explanation, no justification, no sense of anything beyond the most basic fact of ‘Ericka has left, and so we are moving on.’”
Ratcli could not be reached for comment. Joseph-Douglas maintains that a search process to find a replacement for Rolle fell apart after arriving at two final candidates. She also praises the work Rolle did during her Congo Square tenure. (Rolle took on the executive director’s position in August 2020.) “Charlique did such a great job to put Congo Square in firm financial footing that it never felt like we were in chaos.” (Rolle has since moved on to become a producer for Baltimore Center Stage.)
That board president is Dawn Frances Reese, who, according to ensemble member Ann Joseph-Douglas, joined the board in 2020 and then moved up as board president a year or two later. During Reese’s time on the board, Congo Square was under the leadership of Ratcli , who assumed the artistic director role in September 2021 (the first woman to hold that position in the company), and executive director Charlique C. Rolle. Rolle departed Congo Square at the beginning of March 2024, and Ratcliff, as noted, resigned in October (she remains a member of the ensemble). The board named Charles Montorio-Archer as interim executive director in October.
Joseph-Douglas and fellow Congo Square ensemble members Anthony Irons and Ronald L. Conner spoke to me via Zoom on February 14 about their perspectives on the ongoing conflict.
According to Joseph-Douglas, the conflict arose after Rolle departed the company. “When Charlique resigned, I think things began to escalate. I personally witnessed a meeting in which the board chair had accused Ericka of being a liar, had accused Ericka of basically stealing funds from the organization. There was a lot of berating and just really rough conversation, not a lot of listening happening. And I left that meeting, and we had an
The ensemble also maintain that the board is now operating in violation of the company bylaws, which emphasize the primacy of the ensemble. In part, the bylaws read, “The Board’s primary goal is to support the Congo Square Theatre Company Ensemble’s mission and to support its operations as outlined in the Ensemble Members’ by-laws.” Joseph-Douglas explains that the ensemble had created their own nonbinding bylaws that “outline our processes as an ensemble member and your rights and responsibilities.” During the 2020 pandemic shutdown, according to Joseph-Douglas, the board and the ensemble worked together to bring the ensemble bylaws and the official governing documents into alignment.
“This is what blows my mind about our current board chair,” says Joseph-Douglas. “She was on the board at this time. And so there should be a really key understanding of the role of the board and the role of the ensemble.”
Joseph-Douglas also maintains that the board’s “lack of understanding of how to run a nonprofit couldn’t be more evident [than] in the fact that they failed to file the annual report, which is just a document that you fill out online that just reminds the state of who we are, where we’re located, and OFFSTAGE CONFLICT
From L: Alexis J. Roston, Anthony Irons, Ronald L. Conner, and Sydney Charles in WELCOME TO MATTESON! (2023) at Congo Square Theatre SULYIMAN STOKES
who . . . are the stakeholders.” According to Joseph-Douglas, it took a letter from the ensemble’s lawyer to get the board to follow through on that requirement, which is necessary to maintain the company’s nonprofit status.
After the new year, the conflict continued to escalate. On January 14, the ensemble sent a letter through the legal firm of Despres, Schwartz and Geoghegan. The board members listed as recipients included Reese, Norman Dorsey, actor Harry Lennix (who appeared in Congo Square’s production of August Wilson’s one-man show How I Learned What I Learned at Broadway Playhouse last spring), Naja Morris, and Tiara Muse, along with interim executive director Montorio-Archer. Copies of the letter were posted publicly on several ensemble members’ social media accounts.
The letter read in part: “As already stated in the Ensemble’s previous letter, the Chair of the Board of Directors, Dawn F. Reese, has lost the Ensemble’s confidence to lead CSTC, for a variety of reasons including multiple violations of the CSTC bylaws. Namely, Ms. Reese dismissed the former Artistic Director and Executive Director, both of whom are members of the Board by virtue of their o ce, from Board meetings and votes, including those that led to the selection of the interim Executive Director. Ms. Reese has failed to share audits and records of meetings with the Ensemble, in violation of the bylaws. Further, Ms. Reese has fostered a hostile work environment that has caused several longtime figures in CSTC to leave.”
No meeting has taken place. On February 18, via the public relations firm of PR Werks, the board issued a statement.
“The Board of Congo Square Theatre Company unequivocally stands with our Board Chair, Dawn Frances Reese. We are not being silent, nor will we be silenced. We operate with integrity and a steadfast commitment to our mission and the community we serve. Recently, we received a demand letter, and in accordance with legal protocol, we must refrain from discussing ongoing legal matters in the public square. This is not a matter of avoidance—it is a matter of responsible governance and due Process. However, let us be clear: the tactics being employed across social media against our leadership are nothing short of cyberbullying, a serious o ense that falls under criminal code. The very behaviors we are witnessing— harassment, intimidation, and reckless misinformation—are precisely why we are in this
position today. These actions reflect a deeper scenario that must be addressed, and we will not be deterred by such destructive attempts to divide or discredit our leadership.”
Montorio-Archer declined a request for an interview.
Within days of that letter being sent, the Congo Square website was listed as “under construction,” and scrubbed of the names of the ensemble members and the production history.
It’s difficult to assess exactly where the breakdown between the board and the ensemble occurred, though the current Congo Square conflict certainly has echoes of the e ective end of the Victory Gardens Theater company in 2022 after a conflict between the board and former artistic director KenMatt Martin (the latter was stoutly supported by the company’s playwrights ensemble and sta ).
In the aftermath of that public conflict, the Biograph has remained largely shuttered except for occasional outside rentals. (The Victory Gardens website says to “stay tuned” for information about a 50th anniversary celebration. The company was founded in 1974.) There are also reminders of the 2009 departure of most of the ensemble at American Theater Company in the wake of disputes with artistic director PJ Paparelli. (The ensemble reconstituted American Blues Theater, which is still going strong. Paparelli died in a tra c accident in Scotland in 2015, and American Theater Company’s board shut down operations in 2018.)
do?’. . . . And so that gave us a pool of vetted plays that the ensemble approved that we were excited about, that we wanted to see Congo Square do. And then Ericka would kind of curate the season.” Conner adds, “Literally the day before Ericka resigned, she had announced in the ensemble meeting—of course, not publicly—the season that she had planned.”
Conner adds that Montorio-Archer, after Ratcliff’s resignation, announced an upcoming production (one that was on the list compiled by the ensemble, though not, according to Conner, their top choice) to the ensemble without consulting them.
Conner says that he asked Montorio-Archer in a sta meeting, “‘Is the belief still that the ensemble controls the art?’ I was told [by Montorio-Archer] that the company, what it is today, will not look the same tomorrow. And
“I just remember going, ‘I don’t like the way our board chair is talking to our artistic director. This is a recipe for a disaster.’”
that was alarming to me.”
During the pandemic shutdown, the ensemble kept Congo Square going by producing ongoing digital content, including the satirical sketch comedy series Hit ’Em on the Blackside (directed by Irons) and the audio drama series The Clinic. The archives of those programs have also been abruptly scrubbed from the website.
In the case of Congo Square, there is no real estate in question, as the company has been itinerant throughout its history. The capital the company does have seems to reside in the respect and admiration built up through the work of the artists who have collaborated there over the last 25 years.
Conner, who was also on staff as program director at Congo Square before being fired on December 12, notes that the ensemble historically plays an active role in selecting the season, compiling lists of shows that company members are interested in.
“We do assemble a play selection committee to kind of file those down to like the top five or six. And then we submit those five or six to the rest of the ensemble. The rest of the ensemble will read those plays and then vote on, ‘Is this a play that you would like to see Congo Square
Both Reese and Montorio-Archer have previous nonprofit experience. (Reese’s resume includes having served as director of strategy for the Cleveland Avenue Foundation for Education, or CAFE Group, and Montorio-Archer served as interim executive director at the now closed St. Mary’s Home for Children in North Providence, Rhode Island.)
To the ensemble members I spoke with, that doesn’t mean they understand how a nonprofit ensemble-based theater works.
Joseph-Douglas says, “I’ve seen this happen a lot of times with nonprofit boards and particularly in theater, where board members don’t understand why shows don’t make money or break even, because they come from a corporate world. . . . So there is trying to sort of coach your board members through understanding of, ‘This is why we do, this is why we are a nonprofit
THEATER
model.’ The shows are most likely not going to sell at 100 percent capacity. And that is why we have individual giving, and that is why we do work with foundations and with government support. That is why we have a board so that they can drive those fundraising efforts. I get the sense from Dawn in conversations that there is not a really keen understanding of nonprofit theater. Which is the antithesis of business. There’s a power struggle that’s happening here.”
In a response to the board’s statement sent to me February 22, the ensemble said, “The Congo Square Theatre Ensemble can emphatically state that this Board has not responded to any requests for mediation dating as far back as March 2024. Additionally, there has been no response to the requests from our legal representation. Under the current Board Chair’s leadership and direction, they have all been consistent in ignoring our attempts to come to the table to address our grievances and come to a unified resolution. Furthermore, the taking down of our website and social media platforms is evidence of their commitment to the complete erasure of the Ensemble’s contributions and existence, since the inception of our theatre company in 1999.”
Through their PR firm, the board declined to comment on why the website has been e ectively scrubbed.
In an email sent to me February 24, the ensemble added, “The CST Ensemble has successfully worked with the board even during challenging times and leadership transition throughout the past 25 years. The CST Ensemble’s individual and collective reputation in Chicago and the nation speaks to the integrity, passion and artistry. Never has a board in Congo’s history conducted without a desire to be collaborative and respectful of the artists, knowing there is no theater without the artists.” Without an ensemble, will Congo Square even be Congo Square? As of this writing, the impasse continues. The ensemble members have established a GoFundMe. The board’s February 18 statement concludes, “We remain focused on our mission, our community, and the preservation of our cultural heritage. We will not engage in reckless discourse, but we will continue to stand firm in the face of unfounded attacks. Congo Square is a symbol of resilience, and we will not be moved.”
The description of the company at the end of the board statement makes no mention of the ensemble. v
m kreid@chicagoreader.com
THEATER
OPENING
REnnui with a body count
Artistic Home’s Hedda Gabler offers a gripping portrait of deadly boredom.
Maybe it’s because white women once again failed to understand the assignment this past election. Maybe it’s because Mean Girls and Mean Boys are fucking with all of our lives so gleefully right now. Whatever the reason, Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 Hedda Gabler, now onstage with the Artistic Home at the Den under the muscular direction of Monica Payne, feels vital and enraging. Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe’s adaptation, though not exactly streamlined (it still comes in at about two and a half hours) hits almost all the right (that is to say, sour) notes about this most maddening of dramatic antiheroines.
Hedda, as played with venomous self-absorption by Brookelyn Hébert, is only happy when it rains on other people’s parades. Bored by her fusty academic husband, Jorge Tesman (played with endearing befuddlement by Todd Wojcik), Hedda toys with the lives of others because she’s essentially too cowardly to change her own destiny (unlike Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House). When Eilert Lövborg (Dan Evashevski), a rising star of cultural philosophy (think a 19th-century Malcolm Gladwell) returns to town with his new muse, married Thea Elvsted (Ariana Lopez), Hedda’s jealousy, boredom, and self-loathing kick off a series of tragic events, abetted by the amoral Judge Brack (John Mossman), who wants to enjoy his libidinous cake without fear of public scandal
(like any number of GOP politicians).
Payne’s production uses a receding series of four square frames (set by Kevin Hagan) to effectively embody the interior suffocation Hedda feels and the telescoping nature of her destiny—her world literally seems to get smaller the deeper she retreats. Hébert’s Hedda is pitiable at times, but this production resists the temptation to make her wholly a victim of her times and their standards (hard to do when the forthright Mrs. Elvsted is willing to risk her reputation for love and a higher purpose). Instead, what comes through with chilling clarity is how people who refuse to accept accountability for themselves, like Hedda and the judge, can be the most dangerous of all, their need for vicarious thrills too o en bleeding into viciousness and vengeance.
—KERRY REID HEDDA GABLER Through 3/23: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, theartistichome.org, $36 ($21 students/seniors), recommended 16+
RA tale of two families
Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind receives a brilliant revival at Raven.
“This whole thing is cruel,” observes one character in A Lie of the Mind, Sam Shepard’s 1985 magnum opus about the collapse of two families in the wake of a horrific domestic violence incident.
Shepard’s play, brilliantly mounted by Raven Theatre under the direction of Azar Kazemi, does indeed overwhelm its audiences with cruelty at times: the physical cruelty of a man unable to comprehend his wife’s
aspirations and ambitions; the emotional cruelty of a father whose patriarchal dominion is continually undermined by the emotional needs of his family; the existential cruelty of a world that’s constantly demanding we believe things we know not to be true. As with many of Shepard’s works, delusions are at the heart of A Lie of the Mind—some of them concrete beliefs defining the characters; others as ephemeral and difficult to comprehend as the radios that shi stations during the show’s scene changes.
Gloria Imseih Petrelli is terrific as Beth, here depicted as part of an immigrant family and who is struggling to recover from a brain injury delivered at the hands of her estranged husband, Jake (Ian Maryfield). Maryfield’s Jake is o en pure rage—at other times he’s pure despondency. Equally imposing, if not as violent-tempered, is Rom Barkhordar as Baylor, Beth’s father.
Perhaps the finest performance comes from Meighan Gerachis as Lorraine, Jake’s mother, who takes a bumpy ride from one emotional crescendo to another as the story unfolds. Gerachis makes the audience really feel the payoff when Lorraine concludes, “Vengeance is the only thing that keeps me going.” —MATT SIMONETTE A LIE OF THE MIND Through 3/22: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Sat 3/22 2 PM; touch tour and audio description Sun 3/2, closed captioning Sun 3/9; Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, raventheatre.com, $45 ($20 student/military/industry)
R Bloody empire
Redtwist’s Titus Andronicus doesn’t spare the gore.
History is full of bloodbaths, and Shakespeare has never shied away from such drama. Even back then, you did what you needed to do to get butts in seats. But with Titus Andronicus (set during the late Roman Empire), Shakespeare outdid himself with such gleeful depravity that you might start to wonder if he was making a statement about the state of the state. A er all, most of history’s bloody encounters seem to be inflicted upon the unwealthy. In Titus Andronicus, an implosion from within the upper echelons gives the story a satisfying feeling of comeuppance. In their director’s note, Redtwist’s artistic director Dusty Brown admits they lean into the corollaries between the brutality evident in both our current political climate and this ancient emperor’s court.
The play’s one character who isn’t privileged is Aaron, a Black man who is constantly taunted about his race. James Lewis creates a powerful rendition of the savvy Aaron, manipulating people to commit most of
the vengeance. Already aware of the pain injustice can blindly inflict, he is the only character who pauses to reflect on the impact of his actions and who grows as a result. A er the birth of his son to the empress Tamora (played as mostly evil by Laura Sturm), he suddenly understands the depth of loss and the hope of life. He begs for his child to be spared, and he and the baby are the only two characters to escape the gory repercussions of revenge. Whew.
Clever contemporary costume designs by kClare McKellaston combine with a functional yet courtly scenic design by Eric Luchen. The lively cast delivers Shakespeare’s vengeful dialogues (adapted by Brown, Jordan Gleaves, and Caroline Kidwell) with perfect intensity and nuance, followed by gruesome stage combat (created by Michael Dias) that is 100 percent convincing at close proximity.
If you need to watch the timeless tale of an empire other than your own crumbling from its rotten core, then this is the show for you. Patriotic musings on Rome and honor really contrast with the hypocritical amount of stabbings. Adrenaline keeps the audience on its toes. At Redtwist, everyone is close enough to the action to get blood-spattered or grazed with a corpse.
My theatergoing buddy, a 15-year-old newly minted actor, offered his observation during the car ride a er: “Very blood-forward. It changed me.” —KIMZYN CAMPBELL TITUS ANDRONICUS Through 3/30: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3:30 PM; Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwisttheatre.org, $35 ($15 military and seniors/$10 students, pay what you can Fri) v
A Lie of the Mind at Raven Theatre JENN UDONI/FRANCO IMAGES
Kenneth Lonergan
Directed by Nate Santana by Kenneth Lonergan
Directed by Nate Santana by
FILM
Trans Portraiture captures the perseverance of transness onscreen
The upcoming series at Block Cinema presents contemporary and restored films exploring trans history and experience.
By MICCO CAPORALE
“Our chief concern is the transsexual problem,” states a bespectacled older woman in I Am Not This Body (1971), a newly unearthed and restored documentary playing at the Block Museum of Art next month.
In 2025, it’s easy to see the words “transsexual problem” and think of the manufactured gender panic being used to justify transphobic legislation, like President Trump’s executive order to only recognize two sexes and treat them as immutable. (In less than two months of this administration, Euphoria star Hunter Schafer has been issued a passport marking her as “male,” and the State Department announced a permanent “fraud” ban on anyone who attempts to enter the country after legally changing their sex marker.) But in the documentary, the woman uses the words “transsexual problem” to describe the work performed by her employer, the Erickson Educational Foundation: researching and address-
ing the problems faced by transgender people so they can live their fullest lives.
Starting March 5, the Block Museum is screening nine films for a series called Trans Portraiture. It combines contemporary works such as Desire Lines (2024), Bros Before (2022), No More Longing (2022), and Imagine a Body (2021) with older—and in some cases extremely obscure—titles such as I Am My Own Woman (1992); Toni, Randi, and Marie (1973); Communication From Weber (1988); Nancy, Henri, and Elizabeth (1973); and I Am Not This Body to provide a snapshot of how transness has appeared onscreen over time. Not only do these movies demonstrate transness as neither new nor novel, but they also reveal some of the longtime challenges in documenting trans people, culture, and history. Trans Portraiture arrives as a timely reminder that trans people will always exist. What are we going to do about the problems facing them?
In I Am Not This Body, a bouncy-haired bru-
Wed 3/5 at 6 PM; Thu 3/6, Thu 3/ 13, Fri 3/ 14 at 7 PM, the Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, 847- 491- 4000, free blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/cinema/cinema-series/trans-portraiture.html
Deborah Hartin in I Am Not This Body (1971)
COURTESY RICHARD KRAMISEN
nette named Pamela Lincoln sits on a couch between two elegant women named Lyn Raskin and Deborah Hartin. In comes the wool-suited Dr. Leo Wollman—“The most widely traveled specialist in transsexualism!”—who explains to Lincoln that the women beside her are both trans. Over the next 25 minutes, Lincoln asks candid questions about the women’s lives and the doctor’s work. The language used throughout the conversation is dated, and there’s heavy emphasis on the medical aspects of transition because this film’s original audience was other doctors and academics. Nonetheless, Lincoln and Wollman both have a spirit of compassion and curiosity about trans people that feels bittersweet, not only for its sincerity but also for how quickly and easily their conversation dismantles the fears and talking points still being used to vilify trans people more than 50 years later.
The Erickson Educational Foundation was a nonprofit founded in 1964 by a trans man named Reed Erickson. In addition to funding significant research on homosexuality and alternative medicine, it was a pioneer of trans health care throughout the 60s and 70s. This includes establishing the first American gender-a rming surgery clinic, known today as Johns Hopkins Center for Transgender and Gender Expansive Health. Queer- oriented film festivals for gay audiences and their allies didn’t start emerging until the late 70s and took more than a decade to start gaining steam, so films like I Am Not This Body played at conferences and festivals aimed at clinicians and researchers, like the Human Sexuality Film Festival at Johns Hopkins in the early 70s. Most of the earliest known references to trans people on film exist in similar educational films as well as student movies and pornography. Thus, finding them requires deep min-
ing of printed material like screening records, student exhibition catalogs, and erotic magazine advertisements. Michael Metzger, who curates moving images for the Block Museum, first became interested in this kind of undertaking in 2021. During lockdown, he watched a series online organized by Bradford Nordeen called The Girl Can’t Help It: Trans Portraits at the Dawn of the Sexual Revolution. At the time, Metzger was also working with trans cinema scholar and graduate fellow æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil, which helped open his eyes to the wealth of trans movies waiting to be rediscovered. Over the next three years, he put out feelers for dozens of titles, one of which he found with the help of Block Cinema projectionist Ben Creech. Many he’s still looking for.
“These films are scattered to the winds,” he says, “and the people who made them don’t necessarily think of them as the most important thing they’ve ever done.”
One of his holy grails is My Name Is Debbie, a documentary focused solely on Deborah Hartin. In her lifetime, Hartin was one of the most well-known trans people in the world—so much so that, in 1983, The Book of Lists identified her as one of “the ten most prominent transsexuals.” While she made a few other film appearances, I Am Not This Body is among the only surviving footage. Metzger worries whatever prints or tapes remain of My Name Is Debbie and other early trans films will degrade before anyone realizes what they are.
For modern Americans, awareness of trans people and trans rights is a relatively new phenomenon. This is by design—but it has changed in recent years because of digital media platforms and technologies. Until the early 20th century, gender nonconforming people and homosexuals were treated as categorically the same, and in the early days of gay liberation, trans rights were understood as gay rights. Some gay organizers wanted to seem
Jaime Jobim in No More Longing (2022) COURTESY CONNOR LEE O’KEEFE
Aden Hakimi and Theo Germaine in Desire Lines (2024) MARIE HINSON/COURTESY JULES ROSSKAM
more “normal” and respectable compared to the loudest movement activists, who bore the brunt of discrimination: trans people, many of whom were women of color who engaged in survival sex work like Stonewall veterans Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Thus, trans rights were strategically peeled o and discarded from the larger movement. Without the umbrella of the broader queer community, trans people do not have serious strength in numbers. They’ve existed throughout history and cultures, but they’re an extremely fringe group. In 2022, a study by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested there are around 1.6 million trans people in the United States—just over 1 percent of the population. For adults who identify as trans, this figure has remained relatively stable over time. The only thing that’s changed in recent history is more people identifying as trans before reaching adulthood.
Jules Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender Child , doesn’t think more kids are “becoming” trans; they’re just finding the language to describe their experiences sooner. This owes to what’s been called “the transgender tipping point”—the phenomenon of trans rights going mainstream thanks to social media and celebrities like Laverne Cox—which Time argued in a cover story of the same name. But this also proved a tipping point for explicit transphobia. Two years after the story dropped, North Carolina passed the first antitrans bathroom bill, which caused a chain reaction that continues today in the form of aggressive attempts to censor trans people from public life and erase their histories.
The explosion of information circulating about transition online coupled with wider access to film technologies like smartphones and editing software has made it possible for more robust trans filmmaking—which means more movies by trans people, as well as more movies with styles, themes, and approaches that explore trans peoples’ experiences. This can be seen just as much in the recent success of films like The People’s Joker (2022) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024) as in Trans Portraiture.
Desire Lines and Bros Before take complementary approaches to trans people exploring same-sex desire, and Imagine a Body is a short experimental documentary that considers medical transition without conforming to binary ideas of gender. No More Longing is a documentary that uses the vocal changes experienced on testosterone as a metaphor for finding one’s voice. It would be a mistake
to suggest that any of these films are groundbreaking—but it’s easy to see them as such because trans narratives on film have been so successfully obscured.
Nancy, Henri, and Elizabeth is an interviewstyle documentary in a similar spirit to I Am Not This Body, but some of its most interesting moments are subjects describing their desires.
One talks about always knowing she was attracted to men, trying to live as a gay man, and then realizing what she really sexually desired was being treated as a woman. Communication
From Weber is a very avant-garde work about a collage artist and organizer named Lily Sabina Weber, who identified as a “radical, full-time third-sex-role transgender person.” I Am My Own Woman is a semidocumentary by legendary queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a trans woman who came of age in Nazi Germany. Toni, Randi, and Marie—a triptych that will only be shown in its first two parts—tells the story of a burlesque dancer and full-service sex worker whose jobs help them live their nuanced truths while presenting unique challenges. But they’d rather do this work than live otherwise.
At one point in I Am Not This Body, Wollman explains he’s not sure why trans people exist. Maybe it’s genetic, maybe it’s environmental, or it could be some interplay between the two.
He just knows from years of experience that there is a small but very underserved subset of people (maybe a little more than a million, by his estimate in 1971) whose quality of life can be improved—whose deaths can be prevented—if they don’t have to live as the sex they were assigned at birth.
The Institute for Sexual Research, what’s recognized as the world’s first trans clinic, was established in Germany in 1919. Its early theories have long been confirmed by science: that the idea of two biological sexes is overly simplistic at best and dangerous at worst, that gender isn’t defined by sex, and that desire can be fluid and expansive. In 1933, the Nazis took its catalog of 20,000 books—many extremely rare—and burned them in the street outside. It was one of the party’s first and largest book burnings. It’s taken almost one hundred years for that early scholarship to significantly catch on and visibly reshape culture, in part because it was lost. Trans Portraiture shows both the di culty and necessity of depicting trans people’s humanity. In today’s political and cultural climate, the “transsexual problem” should be one of our chief concerns. v
m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com
Iwas for years part of the programming cohort for the Nightingale, a Wicker Park microcinema that closed its physical location several years ago. It was a real home for some—several people lived there at any given time, including some not connected to the film world—and a home away from home for many. A DIY space in the truest sense, the Nightingale primarily screened experimental cinema, often projected from film onto a pull-down screen in the de facto living room. Blackout curtains obscured any outside light, and attendees would sit on folding chairs (which programmers arrived early to help set up), sipping whatever cheap beer someone brought, rapt with attention for whatever was onscreen.
But this isn’t really about then—it’s about now, and a recent moviegoing experience that reminded me of those days. Over this past weekend, there was a three-day retrospective of the films of Amy Halpern across three venues: Block Cinema at Northwestern University, Pilsen bookstore Inga, and Elastic Arts in Logan Square. I went to the latter for two shorts programs, screened almost entirely on 16 millimeter. I relished the opportunity to see the films and, perhaps fittingly (Halpern was a committed member of the Los Angeles experimental film community), to again experience that distinct microcinema vibe, with the mostly silent films accompanied by the scrape of metal chairs on the concrete floor and the whir of the projector in the back.
In an interview with Senses of Cinema, Halpern said her work was “definitely first person
and not diaristic. To me first person cinema is the opposite of being narrative or third person. It is an experience for the person looking, it is for the person looking, to be as intimate as possible. There is no story, there is no other pretext to be there except to experience in first person.” I love the simplicity of this intention, and it’s what I felt while watching—I experienced the experience of experiencing Halpern’s films, enthralled particularly with Halpern’s eye for nature, specifically the newts that appear in several of the works.
I watched another movie about looking last week, albeit more circuitously: Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (2014) at the Gene Siskel Film Center, which I hadn’t seen since it first came out. In between then and now, I’ve gained an intense admiration for Eastwood’s films. I loathed it then, but now, even though I don’t necessarily think it’s among the best of Eastwood’s late career, I better understand the complexity of a divisive, midbudget war movie. What protagonist Chris Kyle does and what he sees, all from a distance, erode his psyche, the consequence even greater than the ideology. Again, I don’t know that it accomplishes the same covert intricacy as some other Eastwood films, but it was interesting to revisit.
To quote Proust, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v
The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.
A still from Amy Halpern’s Newt Pauses (2016)
MUSIC
City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Joshua Eferighe that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.
Just north of Oakdale on Clark in Lakeview, an unassuming recording studio sits between El Nuevo Mexicano restaurant and an unoccupied retail space. The glass front door reads “Studio Shapes,” printed above a red triangle, a blue circle, and a yellow square. Inside, the same shapes are mounted high on the wall opposite the front door, cut out of sound-absorbing panels and lit from behind with colored LEDs. Below the logo is a kitchen with bar seats pulled up to its countertop, and to the right is a minibar topped with wineglasses. To the left of the entrance, a couch, love seat, and center table invite you to relax. From here, only the acoustic-inspired decor makes Studio Shapes look more like a recording facility than a cozy living room—and that’s by design.
“I started seeing an idea for a studio inside of my house and put it together like that,” says
producer and engineer Renzell, the founder and owner of Studio Shapes. The logo “originally came from the geometric designs of musical gear and instruments,” according to the studio’s website, “but has evolved to embody the symmetry that arises when artists get together.”
“My idea was to create this third space,” Renzell explains. “A space that we know that we could just pull up to—because everybody doesn’t want to be in the club, everybody doesn’t want to be in a lounge and around all these people.”
Renzell opened Studio Shapes in late 2022 in a di erent space in Albany Park, and in the years since, it’s blossomed beautifully, growing through word of mouth into a buzzing hub that caters to Chicago’s hip-hop community. Today a diverse array of accomplished and ambitious Chicago creatives frequent Studio Shapes, seeking a haven for connection, networking, and growth.
On any given day, you might find rising Chicago rapper Galaxy Francis (formerly L.A. VanGogh) laying down tracks or underrated musician Elton Aura recording with his band. If you showed up in January, you might’ve
caught J Bambii, Recoechi, Mother Nature, Rhome, and Femdot. doing a video shoot for the latest NFO Cypher (a collaboration with Closed Sessions) in the living room.
Studio Shapes isn’t just a resource for musicians. It’s attracted the likes of Cousinn Vinnie, a local restaurant influencer with more than 55,000 followers on Instagram; Ben Moskow, cofounder of fast-rising Chicago music discovery platform Real Ones; and Frankie Fabre, cofounder of slam-poetry platform Frankie’s Tee and owner of Fabre Studios, which hosts some of the biggest podcasts out of Chicago, including Unapologetically Angel by superstar Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese.
Born in Milwaukee and educated at Columbia College, where he studied audio arts and acoustics, Renzell is a veteran of more than a decade in the Chicago music scene. He’s not just a producer and engineer either—he’s also made his own music as part of the hip-hop collective ThemPeople (where he was known as Lboogie). He found his inspiration for Shapes while working in Los Angeles in 2021.
“I went to LA to Monte Booker’s crib and spent the night for three days,” Renzell says. “That’s when we made ‘Truffles’ from Mick
Renzell in front of the kitchen at Studio Shapes
Jenkins. I’m in his house, and I’m seeing how his space makes it more creative. How it’s set up, the intimacy—even the modern technology and furniture. Then I went to this other studio called Hardpink in LA. They had this co-
working space that was like a studio, but they had little meditation rooms and beanbags. It was fire. I was in there with Smino, and I seen the aesthetic. So I’m like, damn, there needs to be a studio that has an intimate kind of setup, like, in-crib format—not so sterile in the setting. And then I’m like, let me try to do this at my crib.”
Luckily, Renzell already had experience running a studio. In 2019, he says, R&B talent Josh K recruited him to help “guide the vision” of the Spaceship Chicago. Renzell eventually became one of the studio’s lead engineers, but he also continued working out of his apartment in Albany Park—he didn’t give up on his vision of a studio that felt like home.
“That’s why people started gravitating towards my crib,” Renzell says. “I started getting people to be like, man, I want to stay. I want to record here. I don’t want to record over there [Spaceship], and it wasn’t because of no price and nothing. It was because of how they felt when they were in the space.”
It wasn’t until 2022, though, when the parents of a keyboardist he’d worked with agreed to let Renzell use their Albany Park storefront,
that his studio concept became a commercial operation. “I was looking to do a party. I was trying to do this joint that I called a ‘Shape Set.’ They were fucking with the idea and were like, all right, bet,” Renzell says. “Spaceship was an integral part of me seeing that I could open up a studio, because I was running that.”
Determined to attract business to the new space, in summer 2023 Renzell began what’s become one of the marquee events at Studio Shapes: Wine Down Wednesdays, a biweekly function where music enthusiasts can bring wine, spin vinyl, and network. Other regular programs at Studio Shapes include the Cocktail Club and a digital open mike and mixer called AUXTales, and on average, 30 to 45 people show up to each event.
“I was like, what can I do to get people up here? I needed clients,” Renzell says. “I’m like, I like wine and vinyl. Why not have a night where people bring wine and bring vinyl? It started small, with just the people that were already coming through the studio, but then it got a little bit bigger—it started to blow up, like, o of some word-of-mouth type of thing.”
Studio Shapes didn’t lose a step when it
moved to its Lakeview location later in 2023. It hired additional sta and increased its service o erings to include producing shows and developing artists. Renzell hopes to expand into multiple locations and use them to curate spaces that bring attention to Chicago talent.
“All of these artists are being produced out of Studio Shapes,” Renzell says. Most studios consider their jobs done when the recording is finished, but Studio Shapes goes a step further to connect its clients to the rest of the music business. “Now, a label or a corporation or any distribution has a place to go,” he explains. “That’s why I believe big labels and companies shy away from Chicago. They don’t know what’s happening. They don’t know where the artists are. So now the labels know where it’s happening at.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate communitydriven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond
The crowd at an AUXTales event at Studio Shapes on February 6 THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER
MUSIC
CHICAGOANS OF NOTE
Mikel Galati, owner and operator of Modest Merch
“If it wasn’t for playing in bands and doing that for all those years, I wouldn’t have my career. I wouldn’t have my entire livelihood.”
As told to DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB)
Mikel Galati owns and operates a small screen-printing shop on the northwest side called Modest Merch. He prints custom apparel for musicians, clothing companies, small businesses, and others—but his niche is the DIY scene. Galati has been running his shop for 13 years, and he headed down the bumpy road of business ownership when he was 21. He hasn’t held another job since.
“I will work with anybody for the most part, but bands are what I know,” Galati says. “They’re my community; they’re my comfort; they’re my support.”
When I was 19, 20 years old, I wanted to print my own band shirts. I spent, like, 1,200 bucks on equipment or something. I spent every dollar I had to my name. I bought some beginner’s equipment. I looked on YouTube, and it wasn’t accessible the way it is nowadays. I learned from a DVD. That’s how I started. I’ve always been in, like, hardcore-, screamo-, posthardcore-adjacent, loud, aggressive bands. I was always a vocalist, and I started being very active sometime around 17, 18, playing shows—a lot in the suburbs.
Screen printing is a craft, an art, a trade. Screen printing is a form of decorating apparel—printing T-shirts, printing hoodies, printing sweatshirts, tote bags, and everything in between. If I didn’t fall into this pathway, I probably would have gone to trade school for carpentry or something hands-on like that.
This is just an extension of me liking to do manual labor and work with my hands. I’m not very artistically inclined, but I get to bring other people’s art to life with my craft. It’s very analog. It’s very old-school. It’s quite repetitive. I do the same thing over and over, but at the same time, everything is sporadic and all over the place. The repetitive side is the service I o er and what I do, and the sporadic side is owning and operating a business. I’m a screen printer first, business owner second. It’s just me here, front to back. I handle everything from emails and phone calls to prep
work to all the grunt work to printing and producing, down to boxing and meeting clients. I’ve been kind of winging it and making it work for 13 years and adapting and learning as I go. It’s second nature to me now. You use light-sensitive chemicals to create the screen-printing screen, much like the photodeveloping process, darkrooms, and making a negative for a film camera. You make negatives for your images, and then you expose them for the stencil. The beginning of the process starts o similar to chemicals and processes in the photo realm. There’s chemicals, there’s
light-sensitive stu , there’s pressure, water—all this to make a stencil.
When it comes down to it, you’re holding a squeegee, which is a wooden or metal handle with a rubber blade. And all you’re doing is either pushing or pulling a bead of ink through openings in a screen—much like a window screen with tiny, itty-bitty holes. It’s mesh, and you’re just pushing the ink through where the stencil is. Every shirt I do here is with my bare hands. It’s all forearms, really. There’s a lot of muscle in your back because you’re bending over and you’re hunching over, and you’re loading and unloading shirts and doing that repetitive motion.
Everything I do is just like lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat. Everything I do is repetitive. Every act of my process, from prepping to staging shirts, to counting shirts out, to printing, to folding, to boxing, and then even into the prep of cleaning and chemicals and all that—everything I do is a repetitive cycle of steps. And when you do that, it becomes routine. It becomes involuntary; it becomes just second nature. The act of printing, you’re going to feel in your forearms with pulling ink— you’re going to feel it way more than pushing.
The main component an automatic press would eliminate is the human element of the print stroke—the act of pushing or pulling the ink through the screen, or the actual printing of the T-shirt. With manual printing, you’re gonna feel it in your arms. But even on a long day, I don’t go home with my forearms aching and hurting—just my legs. My legs are hurting, because I’m standing the whole time, pacing back and forth. I’m on my feet, not sitting down for eight hours. I’ll be tired. I’ll be fatigued. Or sometimes my back or my wrist will hurt. I’m pushing and pulling and doing the same movement as a row stroke, I guess, on a boat, but not with the same force and muscle and resistance, not at all.
Mikel Galati (R) and his son outside Modest Merch, 6211 W. Touhy COURTESY MIKEL GALATI
There are automated versions of what I do where I would still operate every part of the machine besides printing. But my goal isn’t to be the biggest shop pushing out the most volume. It never has been and never will be. And yes, I can still operate like I am with semiautomated machines and things like that. But there’s something about connecting with hand-printed work. I enjoy the manual side. And sure, if I’m doing, you know, 50 or 100 shirts, it’s no big deal. If someone wants to order 1,000 or 10,000 units, that’s going to beat me up a bit. But I’m not operating at those numbers. My reach, my client base, my normal customers aren’t looking for 1,000s or 10,000s.
If it wasn’t for playing in bands and doing that for all those years, I wouldn’t have my career. I wouldn’t have my entire livelihood. I like to say, bands are not where the money is: Bands are cheap, bands are irresponsible, bands are broke, bands are unfamiliar with the process. And a lot of this, I can say that
because that’s where I come from—because I was that little shit band dude who had no idea what he was doing, hitting up the screen printer. I have a soft spot for bands and musicians, even though sometimes it’s really hard there. Sometimes it can be a really di cult clientele. It’s where my heart is more than it’s where the money is.
I work with a lot of the bands because it’s organic. I’m at these shows, meeting these people. I know their friends or somebody name-drops the reference. A lot of the businesses I work with are adjacent. Sometimes I work with small collectibles, whether it be vintage or Pokémon or things like that. I work with a lot of tattoo shops. The small businesses I do have the pleasure of working with are connected to a band, a musician, a skateboarder, a friend, or they are one themselves. So someone might own a small co ee shop or a small restaurant, [and] they’re like, “Hey, we
“It’s
need T-shirts.” And they’re like, “You printed for my band, or you printed for my best friend’s band or my wife’s band,” or whatever. Again, it almost always translates back to the music community, because that’s where my organic reach is. That’s where my heart is.
A lot of the print shops I know inside or outside the city won’t touch bands as a clientele, or say, “Bands are cheap. Why do you deal with bands? You should get clients like this. You should do that.”
And to me, it’s never been about the dollar amount. When it comes down to bands, I always think budget. I always think: Every band I know
that isn’t huge, that isn’t on a label, that isn’t making a killing, they’re on a budget. They’re budget conscious. They need a van; they need to be on the road. They need gas; they need food. Even if they’re not on the road, they’re paying for rehearsal space, they’re paying for recording, they’re paying for distribution.
I know what it’s like to be a band on a budget, and that’s one thing of why bands aren’t usually the client that’s willing to spend the most money. But it’s why I also [tailor] my pricing to cater to bands and small individuals like that.
I love working with people that I can hang out with. There’s a lot of my clients that have become really good friends, that come to my parties at my house and know my son, my family, and support me outside of these four walls of my print shop. [But] my first interaction with people is merch. It’s printing. It’s shirts. v
m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com
LoveZetters
Mary, Queen of Scots
Maestra Mei-Ann Chen
Valerie Coleman
Michelle Isaac
Clara Schumann
Alma Mahler
Monica Ellis
Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of February 27
Los Angeles quintet SML carry the creative spirit of Chicago jazz
FRIDAY28
Brennan Wedl Hell Trash and #QueerCountry Bandwagon open. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $18, $15 in advance. 21+
Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Brennan Wedl knows the tug-of-war between holding back and going too deep. She was raised in a religious family in Minnesota and attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she sang and played guitar in queercore band Dazey & the Scouts, whose sharp, sprightly tunes merge bubblegum pop with hilarious lyrics about horniness and liberation (on Bandcamp they tagged their only album, 2017’s Maggot , as “masturbation playlist”). Now based in Nashville, Wedl has left much of Dazey’s unabashed goofiness behind, but she’s gotten better at addressing the kinds of inner turmoil and intimate entanglement that people don’t talk about enough. On 2017’s “Walking” she grapples with her Catholic upbringing (“I don’t know if I have a God, but my mother likes to think that I’ve got hers”), and on 2021’s “Manifesting All of the Wrong Things” she confronts self-destructive behavior, acknowledging her shame but insisting that she’s not defined by her worst choices. Early last year, Wedl put out three singles on Kill Rock Stars: “2 Dollar Pistol,” whose blend of indie pop, alt-country, and straight talk rivals classic Shania Twain; “Kudzu,” where she sets lyrics about alienation to an overdriven alt-rock stomp; and “Fake Cowboy,” which provides an insider’s glimpse into the mating rituals of Nashville’s transplant-filled honky-tonk scene and drops 40 seconds of soaring rock ’n’ roll into its wry, quietly ruminative verses. On her latest single, October’s “Heartland,” Wedl returns to memories of the domesticity of her youth, and her wistful vocals and fingerpicked acoustic guitar will feel nostalgic to anyone who’s le behind a traditional life to follow their dreams.
—JAMIE LUDWIG
JAZZ QUINTET SML operate out of Los Angeles, but they can’t be untangled from their Chicago roots. Chicago label International Anthem released the group’s 2024 debut, Small Medium Large . Synth player Jeremiah Chiu, who’s put out some records through International Anthem in the past few years, came up in Chicago in the 2000s as part of the outre music scene connected to South Loop recording studio and collective Shape Shoppe, performing with psych band Axis: Sova, dance experimentalists Chandeliers, and postrock outfit Icy Demons. Inter national Anthem has also released several records featuring SML bassist Anna Butterss, including Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings, two Daniel Villarreal albums, and Butterss’s 2024 solo album, Mighty Vertebrate. Butterss has appeared on several solo recordings by SML guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, a Chicago native, alongside SML saxophonist Josh Johnson. Johnson has in turn recruited Uhlmann and Butterss for his own solo work, and both Johnson and Butterss are part of the quartet that guitarist Je Parker led on last year’s The Way Out of Easy (also on International Anthem). SML percussionist Booker Stardrum has the fewest International Anthem releases, but even before Small Medium Large he was connected to the label at one degree
of separation—in 2018 and 2021, he put out albums through NNA Tapes that feature contributions by late trumpeter and celebrated IA alum Jaimie Branch.
SML recorded the raw material for their album during a pair of twonight stands at defunct Los Angeles venue ETA (where Parker’s quartet cut The Way Out Easy), then extensively edited and rearranged it into bubbling, rustling tracks that sometimes ride a driving groove and sometimes drape themselves languidly over a pointillist pulse. The music feels composed and collected, making smooth transitions at a relaxed pace, and the players all key into small details, allowing them to evolve their performances in subtle shifts. The undulating rhythms of “Search Bar Hi Hat” maintain a low-key cool that’s fluid enough to go wherever the other elements push the song: Blaring synth boosts it into low orbit, slyly funky bass grounds it again, and bawdy sax sends it sideways into another dimension. The most gratifying thing about Small Medium Large is the group’s unselfish interplay. All five members work together as precisely as watch gears, even when they’re floating free of tempo, but they also magnanimously cede the spotlight to let a bandmate take things in a surprising new direction. —LEOR GALIL
Sun 3/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $20. 21+
Brennan Wedl CARLY BROWN
JOYCE KIM
SATURDAY1
Lurid Karkosa, Ossilegium, and Withering Soul open. 8 PM, Live Wire Lounge, 3394 N. Milwaukee, $10, two for $15. 21+
Lurid are relative newcomers to Chicago’s metal scene, but they’ve made a big impression in just a few years. They released two tracks of blackened death-metal fury on their self-titled 2021 demo, then delivered on that promise in 2022 with their debut album, Fire Spell, whose bottomless growls, scouring shrieks, outsize barrages of drums, and ferociously dense riffs summon an atmosphere that’s both icily bleak and horrifyingly lush. At the time of this writing, Lurid are finalizing their upcoming second full-length, The Fool Provokes , engineered by Spenser Morris and mixed and mastered by Bricktop Recording’s Pete Grossman. The album’s five sprawling tracks swing for the fences with soaring blackened melodies, galloping rhythms, and the triumphant swagger of a victory lap around a smoking battlefield. At this Live Wire show, Lurid will be joined by Fort Wayne’s Karkosa, whose blackened death metal feels simultaneously exacting and unrestrained, and two Chicago groups playing melodic fusions of black and death metal: Ossilegium, who released The Phylactery’s Secrets in December, and Withering Soul. —JAMIE LUDWIG
Thalia Hall Free for All Model/Actriz headline the main stage; Blood Club, Bugsy, Old Coke, Fantasma Negra, and Inspired by Favor open. Tack Room features the Slaps, Accessory, Groppler Zorn Trio, and Kevan E ekhari. Punch House presents Will Galvan (DJ set), a drag show hosted by Cléo la Muñeca, and bingo hosted by the Marijuana Brothers. 4:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport. F b
In August, Thalia Hall programmed its first allbuilding event, which filled all three of its spaces— Tack Room, Punch House, and Thalia Hall itself— with opportunities to mingle, drink, eat, shop, and see performances from ten musical acts. The Thalia Hall Free for All returns this Saturday with another expertly curated day of art and entertainment. On the main stage, Brooklyn-based postpunk fourpiece Model/Actriz headline; they made their full-
length debut in 2023 with the sexy, razor-sharp Dogsbody, which could wake the dead for one last party. Local darkwave champions Blood Club, grungy Minneapolis power-pop band Bugsy, Chicago dream-pop group Old Coke, and gothy south-side postpunks Fantasma Negra open that part of the show, along with a roller-skating performance from Inspired by Favor. On the ground floor, Tack Room hosts an all-local music lineup with sets from pianist Kevan E ekhari, jazz ensemble Groppler Zorn Trio, moody alt-rock act Accessory (the solo project of Dehd’s Jason Balla), and idiosyncratic indie rockers the Slaps. Downstairs, Punch House features a DJ set from Will Galvan, a drag show, and bingo. As the event’s name suggests, it’s free to enter, but you’re encouraged to be a good neighbor and make an on-site donation to the Pilsen Food Pantry. —JAMIE LUDWIG
SUNDAY2
SML See Pick of the Week on page 24. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $20. 21+
MONDAY3
Death’s Dynamic Shroud Mukqs and Problems open. 8 PM, the Burlington, 3425 W. Fullerton, online tickets sold out. 21+
Progressive electronic project Death’s Dynamic Shroud began as a one-off in 2014. At the time, the electronic-music community was obsessed with vaporwave, a soporific subgenre whose touchstones included chintzy 80s synths and smooth jazz. Founding DDS producer James Webster thought most of the vaporwave he’d heard sounded like the score to the late-90s Dreamcast game Shenmue, and he used that as the jumping-off point for a send-up of the style. It took the form of the woozy, dreamlike album シェンム〡 ONLINE , which Webster shared with his friend Tech Honors, a fellow Dayton-born musician. They became the first two members of Death’s Dynamic Shroud, and シェンム〡 ONLINE became their debut release. Later that year, another Dayton native made the group a trio: Keith Rankin, who’d cofounded Orange Milk Records and makes
his own out-there music as Giant Claw.
In the ensuing 11 years, the ever-evolving discography of Death’s Dynamic Shroud has grown like mold in a busted fridge. The collective’s prolificacy arises in no small part from their use of the DDS name to refer to music made by one member alone, by any combination of two, or by all three together. Honors produced 2016’s bold, sultry Classroom Sexxtape (released by Orange Milk), Webster and Ranking teamed up for 2015’s gloopy R&B album I’ll Try Living Like This, and the full trio made 2022’s freewheeling Darklife , a standout in their catalog. The members also crank out monthly album-length mixtapes under the name Death’s Dynamic Shroud.wmv and share them with subscribers to their NUWRLD Mixtape Club.
In a March 2024 interview with UCLA Radio, Webster mentioned one of those club releases. “Tech put out American Candy about a month ago,” he said, “this huge mixtape that’s taking the DDS world by storm.” And it’s not a stretch to say that Death’s Dynamic Shroud have a “world.” Their output is so vast that you basically have to be part of their subculture just to make enough time to
hear all of it. I’d rather not see the DDS catalog as a mountain to conquer—it’s more like an ocean you can dip into, without having to commit to swimming across it. In January, Rankin dropped the NUWRLD mixtape Dream Is Over, which opens with a proggy, cartoonish R&B whirlwind called “Release Me” that would be enough all on its own to get me interested in Death’s Dynamic Shroud. They clearly have this effect on lots of people: DDS have a cult following on Rate Your Music, a music catalog and forum that ranks albums based on user votes. As of this writing, RYM’s chart of 2025’s top albums ranks Dream Is Over at 21, two spots above the newest album by pop superstar the Weeknd. —LEOR GALIL
TUESDAY4
Modern Color Webbed Wing, Milly, and Garage Sale open. 6 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $34.61, $30.90 in advance. b
Turnstile’s crossover moment in 2021 cast a powerful spotlight on a blossoming new world of hardcore. The bands didn’t have a unified sound, but because Turnstile had broken out with the radio-ready hooks of Glow On , anyone else willing to lean into clean production and pop songwriting could benefit from the resulting surge of interest. Los Angeles band Militarie Gun are a great example: They’re a hardcore band through and through, but they use Weezer-style guitar riffs and write melodies like Beach Boys fans. Militarie Gun’s Vince Nguyen also drums in Modern Color, who play hardcore only in the broadest sense and perhaps dig even deeper into pop songwriting. The band started in 2014, taking inspiration from indie-friendly posthardcore that overlapped with emo. “There was this cool indie scene happening—with fucking Joyce Manor and Title Fight,” front man Fleming Valenzuela told Alternative Press last May. “It was freeing to think, ‘Oh, we can play whatever the fuck we want.’” You can hear Title Fight’s influence in particular in the
From le : Model/Actriz, Cléo la Muñeca, and Bugsy share the bill at the Thalia Hall Free for All. LILY FRANCIS / COURTESY THE ARTIST / BETHÜNNI SCHREINER
Two members of Death’s Dynamic Shroud, with a skull standing in for the third CHRISTINA WEBSTER
MUSIC
Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews
heaving guitars tinged with melancholy on Modern Color’s July album, There Goes the Dream (Other People). The band avoid outright Title Fight cosplay, though. The rhythm section pound away like they’re stirring up a mosh pit, and Valenzuela belts out his lyrics as cleanly and confidently as a pop star—adding a scuffed-up hopefulness that flavors the music’s aggression with heart. —LEOR GALIL
WEDNESDAY5
La Perla 7:30 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4454 N. Lincoln, $10 suggested donation. F b
La Perla know that serious fun and serious conversations don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Based in Bogotá, Colombia, the trio of Karen Forero, Giovanna Mogollón, and Diana Sanmiguel make effervescent songs that combine folk music from Colom-
bia’s northern coast with other South American and Caribbean styles (including cumbia and rumba) and elements of hip-hop, punk, and pop. La Perla do all this with just percussion, Indigenous flutes called gaitas, and their voices, in harmony and solo (and occasionally beatboxing). Their music is rooted in male-dominated cultural traditions, but they use it to tell women’s stories and fight for social justice; even when they sing about intractable crises such as the deforestation of the Amazon (as they do on “El Sol,” off their 2022 debut, Callejera), they take strength from confronting them together. Over the years, La Perla have toured the U.S., Mexico, Europe, and beyond, and they recently joined forces with a quirky jazz-funk combo from Toulouse, France, called Pulcinella. As PulciPerla, in January the combined ensemble released the album Tatekieto , which plays like a surrealist round-the-world adventure with unusual characters, secret passages, and exciting surprises at every stop. With any luck, La Perla will adapt tunes from Tatekieto for this show, but whatever they play will inspire and energize you. —JAMIE LUDWIG v
SAVAGE LOVE
SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS
Low and slow
Too needy with new daddies; tricked into a threesome
By DAN SAVAGE
Dear readers: when I open a column with “Dear readers,” it’s usually to let you know I’m taking a week off. But this is a brand-new column! All new questions, all new answers. I intentionally dug through the mail for relatively simple questions because I’m just fried from the news. So if you wrote in this week about a particularly thorny interpersonal conflict that would require me to think and focus before responding . . . you’re not going to find your letter. All the questions below are easy pitches—low, slow, and over the plate— because those were the only ones I felt capable of taking a swing at a er the week we’ve all had. —Dan
Q : I’m a newly out gay man who is also exploring kink and leather for the first time. It has been fun, especially because I love daddies. Some wonderful older men have been my guides to this brave new world of rubber and slings. However, a few have ghosted me because I end up texting too much due to the fact that I’m worried they’re losing interest. I’m realizing this is a red flag to others. I’m needy but it’s rooted in the fact that this is all new to me AND since I feel late to the party, I need to move things along quickly to make up for lost time. How do I parent myself through this situation and stop pushing daddies away with my neediness? —BOY LOSING OPPORTUNITIES WITH INCESSANT TEXTING
a : If you’ve gotten unambiguous “you’re too intense,” “you’re too much,”
or “you’re too needy” feedback from multiple guys (verbal and/or nonverbal feedback, to be clear), you should be able to correct course. I mean, you may have just come out, BLOWIT, but you’re a grown-ass man and a grown-ass man can resolve to do things differently. So how about you identify a friend whose phone you can blow up with messages about your latest sexual adventure? Then a er blowing up your friend’s phone for 24 hours, you can send a single thank-you text to the nice guy who set up his sling for you and let him know you’d love to take another ride. Playing it cool is not to be confused with playing games. People who play games lie about their interest or their availability in order get things they want from people who wouldn’t give them those things— their time, their attention, their holes—if they knew the truth. When you play it cool, you’re being honest about your feelings (“I had so much fun and would love to meet up again”) but you’re being thoughtful, considerate, and strategic about when and how you express them.
And if you wind up regularly getting with a guy that you played it cool with at first, BLOWIT, then you can tell him you were so excited after your first session you sent 300 giddy text messages about him to your best friend. He will be flattered that you felt that way about him (and relieved you didn’t blow up his phone) but also even more attracted to you than he was already, BLOWIT, because the ability to self-regulate is something
people look for in partners, both in play and in life.
Q : Quite a few years ago I was tricked into participating in a threesome with my ex and his friend when I was high. I brushed it off as a bad experience and did nothing about it. I’m starting to hear that it was an act of conquistador-like machismo since I’ve moved back home. It was suggested that the boys planned the event to use the interaction as blackmail or gossip material. Should I report this to the police? I’m starting to fear the gossip might turn violent. Looking for advice! —TRICKED INTO THREESOME
a : If you have reason to fear for your safety or if your ex has threatened to blackmail you, TIT, you should be speaking to the police right now and not sending emails to sex-advice monkeys. But if what you’re dealing with is lingering (but totally valid) anger over being talked into doing something dirty while high (but not incapacitated), along with hearsay about gossip (not a crime) and blackmail (a crime if attempted) . . . then no, the police are not gonna swoop in and arrest your shitty ex and his equally shitty friend. Unless and until something actually happens, you’ll have to go back to brushing this off. v
Read the rest of the column, download podcasts, and buy merch at the URL savage. love, where you can also record a question for the Savage Lovecast. m mailbox@savage.love
La Perla MAVA VILLAMIZAR
CLASSIFIEDS
PUBLIC NOTICE
Notice of Public Sale of Personal Property Notice is hereby given that pursuant to Section 4 of the Self-Storage Facility Act, State of Illinois, that Chicago Northside Storage-Lakeview / Western Avenue Storage LLC will conduct sale(s) at www.storagetreasures. com by competitive bidding starting on Thursday March 13th, 2025 until March 20th@12:00 pm for where the property has been stored, Chicago Northside Storage 2946 N Western Ave. Chicago, IL 60618. 773305-4000. In the matter of the personal property for the individual listed below, Chicago Northside Storage-Lakeview / Western Avenue Storage LLC. David Christian CC45, Herbert Hickerson Jr. C57, Enrique Irizarry E01, Jose Ramirez G1112, Juan Mejia K22, Michael Hartman O39, Mariah Mell P50, Kayla Huertas T023 Kara Leonard T177, Brandon Condict F10, Ernest Pentek Q07, Alexandra small T089. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the time of sale’s redemption. All goods are sold as is and must be removed within 72 hours after the time of purchase. Sale is subjected to adjournment. Chicago Northside Storage
JOBS
Business Systems Consultant (Patient Safety), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Effectively influence Safety & Quality technology initiatives & releases, challenge existing processes, policies, & perceptions, by collaborating across the Patient Safety, Epidemiology, & Quality (PSEQ) business & BTS teams. Investigate & understand capabilities of existing systems and
technologies already in use across PSEQ and similar interconnected business areas of the organization, and investigate available technologies applied to this business area in industry. Drive system technology initiatives; manage SLC documentation and support business users in User Acceptance Test phases. Manage GxP system Validation activities including assessment, planning, testing, and approval. Develop business relationships and integrating activities with other Business Technology Organizations to ensure successful implementation and support of project efforts. Exercise considerable latitude in determining objectives of assignment. Has defined authority and responsibility for a significant area of work, including technical, financial, and quality aspects. Must possess a Bachelor’s Degree and 5 years of work experience in Information Technology (IT), including application project management work experience. Of the work experience required, must have 5 years working with a matrixed organization, working with business stakeholders to define needs and to interpret needs for the IT team, and 2 years in each of the following: (i) working in the Pharmaceutical industry, & (ii) leading technology Validation activities for GxP applications. Experience may be gained concurrently. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en & reference: REF36014J. Salary Range: $143,999.86 - $173,500.00 per year
Coyote Logistics, LLC seeks Data Scientist II in Chicago, IL. Telecommuting is permitted. $107,000137,000/year. To apply and see benefits summary visit: www.jobpostingtoday. com ID# 86995. www. jobpostingtoday.com
E-Commerce Manager sought by Littman Bros Energy Supplies in Chicago, IL to manage the online presence of the company, ensure
website contains accurate information & optimize over 200,000 products to customers. $81,474/ yr. Reqs 3 yrs exp in rltd ocptn. Mst hv perm auth to wrk in US. Snd rsm & cvr lttr to 213 W Institute Pl, Ste 704, Chicago, IL 60610. Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting, Inc. - Senior Manager - Chicago, IL. Provide strategic consulting to clients in the insurance industry on broad range of projects such as actuarial transformations, mergers & acquisitions, capital markets transactions including XXX & AXXX reserve financing, & life & annuity product dev & reporting. Job reqs Bach deg in Actuarial Sci, Biz Admin, Math, Statistics, Econ, or rel field & 2 yrs in any job title involving actuarial consulting or ind exp. Up to 40% telework permitted. Up to 10% domestic travel required for business meetings. To apply, send resume referencing job code OW141 to OWGRecruitment.US@ oliverwyman.com. No calls.
Quantitative
Researcher
Aquatic Group is seeking a Quantitative Researcher in Chicago, IL. Create and improve proprietary trading models and strategies. Must live within normal commuting distance of worksite. May work remotely up to 10 days per year. Please go to https:// aquatic.com/#careers to apply and get info on role and benefits.
Estimator (Chicago, IL): Apply tech knowledge of building & engineering principles to prepare estimates. Perform settlement & all subs close-outs on project completion. Salary: $170,000/yr. Reqs: Bachelor’s degree in Construction Mgmt/ Quantity Surveying/
foreign equiv + 12 mths exp. in position/ Sr. Consulting Quantity Surveyor. Reference Job Code: JTMLSE12025. Mail CV to JT Magen, 44 W 28th St, New York, NY 10001. Attn: S. D’arcy, Collection Coordinator.
Five Seasons Family Sports Club seeks Jr Tennis Directors for Burr Ridge, IL location to create & direct jr tennis programming. Bachelor’s in any field +2yrs exp req’d. Req’d Skills: 5.0 playing level (NCAA Div. I level player or former ATP prof.); understanding of the USTA 12 & under dev re: red, orange, & green ball. $78,000-88,000/ yr. Send resume: Jack Winters, jwinters@5ssc. com, REF:MA
Manager II, Marketing Analytics , AbbVie US LLC, North Chicago, IL. Act as a market analytics lead and intelligence partner for Psych Marketing, focused on providing strategic insights, forming a trusted relationship, and staying abreast of commercial issues and burgeoning trends within the space. Build solid relationships as a team player, while maintaining objectivity & lack of bias to represent the voice of the customer. Demonstrate thoughtful confidence in presentation of learnings across different levels of the organization. Appropriately manage & collaborate with research suppliers. Monitor and manage analytics within budget & identify opportunities for cost savings where appropriate. Ensure all activities are conducted in accordance with financial & ethical compliance guidelines. Bachelor’s degree required in one of the following fields: Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics, Econometrics, Actuarial Science, Decision Sciences, Operations Research, Finance, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology &/or Applied Mathematics, plus 4 years of work experience performing predictive modeling synthesizing
marketing analytics, database marketing, & data engineering within the pharmaceutical industry utilizing pharmaceutical data (physician-level prescribing, institutional sales data, payerprescriber-level data, formulary data, patientlevel data). Of experience required, must have: 4 years using quantitative analysis for sales & marketing, to be used in the development of business plans & strategies; 4 years of experience performing project management, navigating a heavily matrixed & fast-paced environment; and 3 years collaborating cross-functionally within the organization & with external agencies. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en & reference REF36020F. Salary Range: $170,000 - $223,500 per year.
Optimization Engineer sought by Optimatics LLC in Chicago, IL, to support the use of the Optimizer s/ware by new & existing customers to help optimize planning decisions in water infrastructure networks & provide successful hydraulic optimization analyses. Availability to travel domestically once per month, w/ limited notice, & Int’lly, occasionally, once or twice per yr. Min. Req: Master’s in Civil, Water Resources, or Envrmt’l Engg or rltd field or foreign equiv deg. 2 yrs exp in water-rltd infrastructure projects. 2 yrs exp working w/ water utility & municipality engineers & networks, incl both collection & distribution systems. 2 yrs exp in collection system H&H modeling (e.g., EPASWMM, InfoWorks ICM, MIKE 1D, etc.). 2 yrs exp in Distribution/ Transmission system modeling (e.g., EPANET, WaterGEMS, InfoWorks WS Pro, etc.). Proficiency in GIS s/ware (ESRI ArcGIS &/or QGIS). Strong academic training w/ prgmg languages such as Python, R-Studio, & Matlab. Apply at https://optimatics.com/ careers/ & search for “Optimization Engineer.”
standards for either production/validation with creating specifications for structure of ADaM data sets for individual studies. Develop SAS programs for creation of Tables, Listings & Figures for either production/validation, also responsible for accuracy of SAS programs by reviewing output, code, & log files. Must possess a MS in Statistics, Biostatistics, Computer Science, or a related field and 6 months of relevant statistical programming experience, or alternatively, would accept BS in Statistics, Biostatistics, Computer Science or related field and 2 years of relevant statistical programming experience. With either combination of education or work experience, must have 6 months of related experience in the following: (i) providing SAS programming support for pharmaceutical industry clinical trials; (ii) coding SAS programs using SAS base; (iii) utilizing SAS tools SAS/MACROS, SAS/SQL, SAS/GRAPH, & SAS/STAT; (iv) developing ADaM datasets in compliance with CDISC standards & developing Tables, Listings, & figures; (v) creating documentation for regulatory filings including reviewers’ guides & data definition documents, & (vi) complying with FDA & EMEA regulatory agencies/ ICH guidelines & relevant regulatory requirements. Experience may be gained concurrently. Any suitable combination of education, training or experience is acceptable. 100% telecommuting permitted. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en & reference REF36010H. Salary Range: $102,523 - $118,500 per year.
telecomms or related, plus 36 mos exp. in cloud engineering or related occ. Must possess Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Certification in: Professional Cloud (PC) Architect, PC DevOps Engineer, PC Developer, PC Security Engineer AND PC database engineer. To apply & for add’l duties, email resume to HR at Recruiting@66degrees. com Pay range: $216,300k-$275k. Benefits include: Med. dental, vision, STD/LTD/ Life ins, 401k match & health incentives. For more benefits visit www.66degrees. com/careers Recruiting@66degrees.com
SERVICES
Statistical Programmer (Data & Statistical Sciences (DSS)), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, Illinois. Interface with DSS. Serve as an integral project team member in R & D of new pharmaceutical products. Analyze & report clinical trial data under direction of Senior Statistical Analyst. Provide SAS programming support for clinical trials. Develop SAS programs for creation of Analyst Data Models (ADaM), data sets following CDISC
Sr. Dir. Cloud Engineering, US, Chicago IL, 66Degrees a data and AI solutions co. seeks a Sr. Dir. Cloud Engineering, US, to lead practice development & management; collaborate with executives to identify & define growth opps, support pre-sales, qualification, scoping & delivery activities; represent org. & partners in industry events, develop internal & clientfacing materials to build expertise. Responsible for team resource management. Resolve client-facing escalations, lead infrastructure engineering strategies, design development plans in Cloud Engineering, determine KPIs to manage Department effectiveness, manage billable hours utilization & revenue projections. Duties may be performed remotely from anywhere in the U.S. Overnight travel once per month lasting 24-72 hours. Required: Bachelors in Eng, electronics, I.T., I.S., info. m’ment, C.S.,
CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning. com www. ChestnutCleaning.com
MATCHES
Charles MJM 5’11 175 Looking For Mature Jewish Female Weekend Playmate Wine Hot Oil Oral Massages Spanking Antiques Thrift Shops Hot Sex Bondage Can host discreet call charles-224-292-9899 charles 224-292-9899
Save the Chicago Reader
Donate today
We’ve done this work for over 53 years, and just like you, we can’t imagine a Chicago without the Reader. Right now, we need your financial help more than ever.
In 2024, we published:
46 dance reviews
311 theater reviews
202 film reviews
325 music previews
We’re not ready to stop this work. Chip in today. Share on social media.
